New Jersey Bureau of Securities orders cease and desist on Voyager

The New Jersey Bureau of Securities has been in the headlines following its cease and desist order against centralized, crypto-based staking, trading, and lending platform, Voyager Digital, for allegedly selling unregistered securities through its Voyager Earn Program.

The order says that since November 2019, “Voyager has been, at least in part, funding its income-generating activities, including lending operations, digital asset staking, and proprietary trading, through the sale of unregistered securities in the form of cryptocurrency interest-earning accounts.” 

The organization believes that each of those crypto staking and lending accounts is unregistered because of their promise of interest rates as high as 12%. 

The claim messages on Voyager’s website, which encourage users to “grow your portfolio” and “journey to the new frontier of investing,” are cited by the Bureau as proof.

New Jersey states that its citizens have 52,800 accounts and $187 million in assets on Voyager, out of a total of 1.5 million active accounts and $5 billion in assets.

Notably, Voyager Digital hinted at the integration of Avalanche staking, NFT, and the DeFi app.

New Jersey Bureau of Securities criticized Voyager

New Jersey Bureau of Securities explained the complete process of the company by soliciting investors to invest in the “Voyager Earn Program Accounts by depositing certain eligible cryptocurrencies into the investors’ Voyager Earn Program Account.” After obtaining crypto from retail investors, Voyager then pools these tokens together to fund its various income-generating activities, like lending operations, proprietary trading, crypto staking, and investments in other crypto trading platforms, such as Celsius Network. It explains.

In return for participating in the Voyager Earn Program Accounts, investors get a competitive interest rate paid monthly in the same currency that was used to make the initial investment.

The program’s marketing techniques were also questioned, with regulators claiming that ads for the program neglected to disclose that Voyager Digital LLC, the program’s parent firm, is a publicly-traded corporation in Canada, not the United States. According to the order, this “creates a misleading impression regarding Voyager Digital, LLC’s regulatory status.”

Last year, as TheCoinRise reported, Bitfury CEO Brian Brooks joined Voyager Digital as Non-executive director.