Basis returns money to investors
Inventors into Basis included some of the biggest names in finance with raising $133 million:
Andreessen Horowitz
Bain Capital
Stanley Druckenmiller
Former Fed governor Kevin Warsh
The idea was to create a US dollar stablecoin to take on Tether and Gemini. However leaders announced the project would be dissolved today and the money returned to investors.
"Unfortunately, having to apply US securities regulation to the system had a serious negative impact on our ability to launch Basis," a blog post by Nader Al-Naji, chief executive of Intangible Labs, said on Thursday.
The company was trying to respect regulation and just couldn't do it. That's a worrisome signal for the 60-or-so other stablecoins in development. It's also a problem for Tether and the never-ending rumors of its demise.
What's refreshing is that they realized there was always a regulatory risk and planned to return money to investors if it didn't work out.
"The binary nature of our bet is precisely why we included a return of capital clause in our token sale to begin with, even though it was something we hoped we'd never have to rely on. So, while we're disappointed we couldn't launch the system we were all hoping to build, we're thankful that we can at least do right by our investors given these circumstances," the post says.
I wish that was the case in hundreds of ICOs in the past year.
