Gladius Network, which had earlier in the year been charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for selling a security that was not duly registered, has announced that it is closing down the business.
The announcement, delivered by Gladius Co-Founder, Alex Godwin read:
“Despite our best efforts, the company no longer has funds to continue operations,” Alex further added, “the shutdown comes into effect immediately.”
Gladius Initial Coin Offering
In 2017, the cryptocurrency startup issued an initial coin offering (ICO) that saw it raise around $12.7 million, which was at the time equivalent to 24,000 ETH. At the beginning of 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission noted that the ICO issued by the startup had not been duly registered as required by federal securities laws.
The two parties then reached a settlement. Gladius, as part of the settlement agreement, was required to issue refunds to stockholders who requested one. The startup was also asked to make sure that it registered its tokens as a security.
New Registration Date
According to company insiders, the startup was expected to formalize the securities exchange registration by November 18. Taking into account the fact that the company has just announced that it is shutting down, it’s not clear whether Gladius, the Washington-based company ever started the registration process. Various crypto blogs have reached out to the co-founder to provide any updates received from the cryptocurrency startup.
Gladius had created a decentralized P2P network that would see it rent out its spare storage and bandwidth space to clients looking to defend themselves against cyberattacks. With the closure of the company, it has sought to ensure that its code remains open on GitHub. It’s expected that this code will remain open for the next ninety days (3 months).
Asked why this was the case, Godwin stated that this was enough time to enable interested developers to continue to build on the code. He concluded by stating:
“We still believe in the power of our technology, and if anyone in the community is interested in pursuing, it we welcome it.”
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