“The issuers promoted the tokens based on their potential for investment returns, which they claimed derived from the promised efforts of the promoter’s management team to create, develop, and maintain an ecosystem that would increase the demand for a token, and thus its price,” Judge Lin wrote, referencing the complaint in her analysis of one of the Howey prongs. “A number of issuers even posted their tokens’ daily price on their websites. Any objective investor would therefore have expected to profit from trading in the tokens.”
