On Monday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) temporarily suspended the trading of the shares of UBI Blockchain Internet, a Hong Kong-based blockchain firm. Trading will be frozen until January 22.
The market watchdog cited potentially inaccurate information in the regulatory filings, and also the unexpected activity of the firm’s stocks in the market since November.
On December 9th, the share prices of UBI Blockchain Internet was a mere $9 which spiked to $87 on December 18th. But It didn’t stop there. As of Friday, the stock prices took a dive and settled at $22. Amid all these activities, SEC imposed the suspension which began from Monday 9:30 am Eastern Standard Time.
In the official announcement, the agency explained: “The Commission temporarily suspended trading in the securities of UBIA because of (i) questions regarding the accuracy of assertions, since at least September 2017, by UBIA in filings with the Commission regarding the company’s business operations; and (ii) concerns about recent, unusual and unexplained market activity in the company’s Class A common stock since at least November 2017.”
UBI Blockchain Internet claims to apply blockchain technology to the healthcare space in China. The company is developing products against the backdrop of the Internet of Things. In its public disclosure, the firm only provided an overview of its technical work without giving too many details.
The recent jump in the shares of this firm made it the second most valuable publicly traded blockchain firm, behind only LongFin Corp. This gain raised a lot of questions regarding the firm’s business. At the end of December, a detailed report was published by Bloomberg explaining all the anomalies related to the firm.
UBI Blockchain Internet is not the first blockchain firm suspended by the SEC. Over the last few months, the watchdog has done the same to a few other firms over concerns regarding the authenticity of their public disclosures.
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