BOME increased 1,000 times in three days, once again opening the door to ICO illegal fund-raising

Source: Lawyer Liu Honglin

On weekends, friends in the currency circle are busier than working overtime on weekdays.

A MEME project called BOME completely confused Web3.0 value investors in three days.

The general situation of the story is this: On March 14, Pepe Meme artist Darkfarm tweeted, saying that he would raise some funds to issue a BOOK OF MEME ($BOME) on the Solana chain. project.

Darkfarms explained that "BOOK OF MEME" is not just an eye-catching shitcoin, it is a digital magazine that can be updated in real time, a creative Meme production platform, and a collection of endless CC0 A gallery of Meme images with links to all JPEG images that have not yet been minted.

With zero pre-publicity, zero risk investment support, zero airdrop activities, zero token generation activities (TGE), and zero whitelist activities, the market value went from US$2 million in just three days. It has reached 1.5 billion US dollars. What is even more outrageous is that it was launched for contract trading on the Binance exchange on Saturday morning and spot trading in the afternoon, becoming the fastest MEME coin to be listed on Binance in history.

Darkfarms, the initiator of the project, recently summarized its views on X: Meme is art , art is Meme; Meme is life, life is Meme; Meme is the Internet, and the Internet is Meme. He believes that whoever controls Meme controls the universe. ?

This wave of cool operations by BOME has made many Web3 entrepreneurial friends lament that they have worked hard for half a lifetime, and they are done in just three days.

Not only friends in the currency circle, but also lawyers in the currency circle are emotional. I can’t help but sigh:The blockchain industry has been developing for six or seven years, and compliance has returned to before liberation overnight.

China’s project parties have never lost when it comes to follow-up innovation.

At the same time that BOME became popular, many currency speculation KOLs who were active on X posted posts to raise funds publicly. For example, this netizen whom Lawyer Honglin saw in the morning said straight to the point that he wanted to raise funds.

Of course, financing is not the purpose, the purpose is to recast the glory of the BSC chain.

According to the netizen, the original plan was to raise 18,000 BNB ( Note: On March 8, 2024, the price of BNB was about 550 US dollars, and the project was equivalent to about 75 million yuan). As a result, netizens were too enthusiastic and the quota was probably exceeded in one night.

This operation is probably something that even the project sponsors didn’t expect, and as a lawyer in the Web3 industry, I didn’t even expect it.

I originally thought that friends who are a little bit risk-aware in the currency circle should already know that conducting ICOs in China is illegal and criminal, but judging from the current operation situation, you really are not thinking of someone else. Thought so.

Perhaps in the eyes of these netizens, this thing is fun enough. If a foreign celebrity can do it, why can’t they do it themselves? There is a truth that the monk can touch but I cannot touch.

But unfortunately, China’s public security generally doesn’t care about foreign monks.

If you are a Chinese citizen, or you raise funds for virtual currencies from Chinese citizens, then sorry, this is a crime.

On September 4, 2017, the central bank and seven other ministries and commissions issued the "Announcement on Preventing Token Issuance Financing Risks", clearly stating thattoken issuance financing is essentially an unauthorized and illegal public disclosure Financing activities are suspected of illegal sales of tokens, illegal issuance of securities, illegal fund-raising, financial fraud, pyramid schemes and other illegal and criminal activities. It is required that all types of token issuance and financing activities should be stopped immediately from the date of the announcement. , organizations and individuals that have completed token issuance financing should make arrangements such as liquidation and withdrawal.

Since then, friends who are engaged in Web3 in China and want to issue currency will basically choose to go overseas for compliant development, whether it is applying for overseas identity or setting up a foundation overseas as the currency issuance entity. In order to avoid violating China's regulatory policies and bringing unnecessary jail time to oneself, but judging from the current situation, lessons learned from the past may not be a guide for future ones.

There are quite a few KOLs who directly issue coins to raise funds like the friend above, and even more KOLs, in order to encourage everyone to participate, said without hesitation that "the opening price will be increased ten times." By the way, do young people in the currency circle speak so directly now?

Butit’s not just the game, it’s your own life.

Maybe in the world of these friends, it is really Think of yourself as a citizen of the world. I feel that the Internet is a lawless place and I can do whatever I want. But sorry, this is definitely an illusion.

Of course, for those of you who are trying to raise money and then have their wealth freely spread overseas, I am too small.

As a bystander, you can say that we are too careless to worry about it, but you must know that the vast majority of project developers who raise funds on the Internet are scammers. Participating in an ICO may be fun for a while, but you will lose the bet. It is the currency circle crematorium.

There are too many scammer projects like this in the currency circle.

So emphasize again the main purpose of this article:

1. The pre-sale of MEME coins is a typical illegal fund-raising act. It's a crime if you do it. It has nothing to do with whether you have professional operations or whether you put the raised funds in the liquidity pool.

2. As an individual player in the currency circle, just watch the excitement, don’t follow the chaos, let alone follow the nonsense.