Last Updated on October 3, 2022
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has banned celebrity Kim Kardashian from promoting cryptocurrency for a period of three years, and fined her $1 million, for supposedly illegally promoting a cryptocurrency offering.
Kardashian allegedly took a $250,000 payment to plug EMAX tokens, an offering from EthereumMax, without revealing that she was getting paid to do it, and the SEC has a problem with it. Kardashian has to pay back the money she earned plus the million dollar fine.
As SEC chairman Gary Gensler said, “Ms. Kardashian’s case also serves as a reminder to celebrities and others that the law requires them to disclose to the public when and how much they are paid to promote investing in securities.”
Kim Kardashian is the latest celebrity to be slapped with SEC fines over cryptocurrency promotion. In 2020, actor Steven Seagal agreed to pay more than $300,000 as part of a similar settlement with the SEC, which also banned him from promoting investments for three years, according to a report from the Associated Press.
In 2018, boxing star Floyd Mayweather settled similar issues with the SEC for failing to disclose payments received for promoting digital currency.
The Treasury Department’s Financial Stability Oversight Council is pushing for enforcing more rules on cryptocurrency, which is a big cause of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who reportedly might be on her way out of office after the 2022 midterm elections.
Just last week, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell called for increased cryptocurrency regulation. “There’s a real need for more appropriate regulation, so that as DeFi expands and starts to touch more retail customers and that sort of thing, so that appropriate regulation is in place,” Powell said last Tuesday.
In addition, fed chair also discussed the development of a U.S. government-led digital currency, which would require Congressional approval to implement. Powell admitted that a United States’ Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) will “not be anonymous.”
