A new report says a record number of federal lawsuits related to initial coin offerings (ICOs) and cryptocurrencies were filed in the first half of this year.
Plaintiffs filed 204 new federal securities class actions during the first half of 2018, continuing an accelerated filing pace.
Out of the 111 "core" filings - those without M&A claims - made in the first six months of 2018, seven were related to ICOs or cryptocurrencies, as per the "Securities Class Action Filings 2018 Midyear Assessment".
The report was prepared by Cornerstone Research and the Stanford Law School.
The first five ICO/cryptocurrency-linked U.S. class action lawsuits were filed in 2017.
The cryptocurrency related suits filed in 2018 include those against Paragon Coin, Latium Network, DRIP, Cloud With Me, Mining Max, Bitconnect and Ripple Labs.
The case against Mining Max was dismissed last month, while six other firms are still involved in litigation.
Stanford Law School Professor Joseph A. Grundfest, who is also the co-author of the report, said that class action securities fraud litigation continues to affect a large percentage of publicly traded firms. "If the trends observed in the first half of the year continue to year-end, approximately 8.5 percent of all companies listed on the NYSE and NASDAQ markets will have been sued in these cases," according to the former commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
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