The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has filed suit against crypto executive Donald Basile, alleging he and two companies he controlled raised roughly $16 million by promoting an asset-backed, “insured” token called Bitcoin Latinum that was not insured or backed as advertised.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, the SEC complaint says Basile ran the offering from March through December 2021 through Monsoon Blockchain Corp. and GIBF GP Inc. Investors were sold Simple Agreements for Future Tokens (SAFTs) promising future delivery of Bitcoin Latinum. The SEC alleges Basile repeatedly told hundreds of investors the token was backed and covered by insurance, but that no insurer provided coverage and no evidence supported those claims.
According to the complaint, investor funds were not used to support the token’s value; instead millions were diverted for Basile’s personal expenses, including real estate purchases, credit-card payments and the purchase of a $160,000 horse. The SEC is asking the court for permanent injunctions, disgorgement of alleged ill-gotten gains with interest, civil penalties, a ban on Basile from participating in securities offerings and an officer-and-director bar that would prevent him from leading public companies. The Bitcoin Latinum website currently returns a 404 error.
The case is one of relatively few SEC enforcement actions reported during the Trump administration era, which had signaled a more crypto-friendly regulatory stance compared with earlier periods.
Separately, the SEC has publicly criticized its past crypto enforcement strategy for emphasizing case volume over demonstrable investor benefit. The agency acknowledged that many earlier actions did not directly aid investors and represented a misallocation of enforcement resources. Since fiscal 2022, the SEC says it has brought 95 actions and collected $2.3 billion in penalties tied to book-and-record violations, while noting that some cases involving crypto registration and dealer definitions did not identify clear investor harm.
Under Chair Paul Atkins, appointed in 2025, the SEC says it has shifted away from what it calls ‘regulation by enforcement’ and is prioritizing cases that address fraud, market manipulation and serious abuses of trust.
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