YouTube says SEC will recommend that a lawsuit be dropped during 2018 tokeen ICO

Update (March 11 at 9:59 pm UTC): This article was updated to include a response from SEC.

Ian Balina, CEO of Taken Metrics and YouTube, with more than 100,000 subscribers, said that the US Securities and Stock Exchange will stop following him in court because of allegations that he violated securities laws by strengthening Sparcter’s symbols in 2018, said Ian Balina, CEO of Taken Metrics and YouTube with more than 100,000 subscribers.

Speaking to Cointelegraph on March 11, Balina said that the Supreme Education Council had informed him that it had planned to recommend the court that rejects a case in 2022 on the pretext of “unregistered offer and promotion in 2018 from Crypto Asset Securities called SPRK Tokens”.

According to Crypto Youtuber, SEC’s actions were based on change in management priorities – referring to US President Donald Trump, who appoints SEC Mark Oida president after the departure of Gary Ginsler in January.

“It is clear that the new administration is a supporter of crying,” Balina said, claiming that “time has ended” to regulate encryption through implementation.

SEC’s complaint against Balina, which was submitted in September 2022, claimed that YouTube agreed to obtain a 30 % bonus of Sparkster on the distinguished codes of $ 5 million that he bought in the preliminary currency show (ICO) – but he did not reveal this information to his followers on social media. In one of the last important court rulings, a judge said in May 2024 that “SPRK codes qualify as securities” under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Education Council.

At the time of the decision in 2024, the legal team in Balina said it was planning to appeal. The judge initially set the date of the jury trial in January 2025, but he agreed to the July 2024 request to conduct a continuation and agreed to set the date of the procedures at a later time. At the time of publication, no file appeared on the list in the US District Court of the Western Region in Texas, which requests to reject the case. In response to an investigation from CointeleGRAPH, SEC refused to comment on the case.

“It is certainly not cheap, as it cost a lot of money in terms of legal fees, which certainly absorbs,” said Balina. “It makes me hope that SEC will prioritize all this.”