The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has settled fraud accusations with firms associated with Archblock and the TrueUSD stablecoin.
The related companies were also said to offer and sell securities tied to TUSD without registering with the SEC.

TrustToken and TrueCoin – now rebranded and under the umbrella of Archbock – settled accusations that they knowingly misrepresented the backing of the TrueUSD (TUSD) stablecoin and offered securities tied to it without properly registering, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said in a Tuesday statement.

The California-based firms, which didn't admit or deny wrongdoing in settling with the SEC, had claimed TUSD enjoyed one-to-one dollar reserves when the stablecoin's issuer was instead investing in "a speculative and risky offshore commodity fund," the agency said.

The companies agreed to pay $163,766 each in fines, and TrueCoin will return nearly $400,000 in profits and interest, assuming a federal court approves the settlement. They've also agreed not to violate the relevant securities law, the SEC said.

TrueCoin was the original issuer of TUSD, which later ended up in the hands of offshore firm Techteryx and has a current market cap of nearly half a billion dollars. TrustToken operated a "so-called lending protocol," TrueFi, the SEC said. The entities in Tuesday's settlement are accused of engaging in unregistered offers and sales of securities involving TUSD through TrueFi, and the agency said they remained closely tied to the asset after unloading the stablecoin to the other issuer.

"TrueCoin was also at least partly responsible for the design and content of theTrustToken website, which included links to buy TUSD and invest in TrueFi," according to the SEC's complaint.

Both companies were said to be aware of redemption problems in 2022 with the popular stablecoin, the SEC said. Archblock didn't immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

“TrueCoin and TrustToken sought profits for themselves by exposing investors to substantial, undisclosed risks through misrepresentations about the safety of the investment,” said Jorge G. Tenreiro, acting chief of the SEC’s Crypto Assets & Cyber Unit, in a statement. “This case is a prime example of why registration matters, as investors in these products continue to be deprived of the key information needed to make fully informed decisions.”

At one point, more than 13% of TUSD were tied to profit-seeking opportunities on the TrueFi platform, according to the complaint.

TUSD slipped from its $1 dollar peg earlier this year.

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Jesse Hamilton

Jesse Hamilton is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor on the Global Policy and Regulation team, based in Washington, D.C. Before joining CoinDesk in 2022, he worked for more than a decade covering Wall Street regulation at Bloomberg News and Businessweek, writing about the early whisperings among federal agencies trying to decide what to do about crypto. He’s won several national honors in his reporting career, including from his time as a war correspondent in Iraq and as a police reporter for newspapers. Jesse is a graduate of Western Washington University, where he studied journalism and history. He has no crypto holdings.