DeFi Protocol Rari Capital Settles Misleading Investor Allegations with SEC

The US SEC on Wednesday announced a settlement with DeFi platform Rari Capital and its founders over misleading investors and operating as unregistered brokers.

The SEC alleges that co-founders Jai Bhavnani, Jack Lipstone, and David Lucid engaged in unregistered broker activities by managing two blockchain investment platforms. These platforms, at their peak, handled over $1b in crypto assets.

Further, Rari Capital settled with the SEC over accusations of unregistered securities offerings tied to three of the platform’s assets. Additionally, Rari Capital Infrastructure LLC, which took control in 2022, also settled charges for unregistered securities offerings and broker activities.

SEC Alleges Rari Capital’s Earn and Fuse Pools Involved Unregistered Securities

According to the SEC’s complaint, Rari launched two investment products: Earn pools and Fuse pools. These acted as crypto investment funds where investors deposited assets into lending pools. Rari managed Earn pools, while users created Fuse pools, both generating returns for investors.

Investors received tokens representing their stake and profit rights, with some Earn pool investors also acquiring Rari Governance Tokens (RGT). The SEC alleges that by offering these tokens and RGT, Rari Capital conducted unregistered securities transactions.

Rari Allegedly Misled Investors on Earn Pools’ Returns

Further, the complaint claimed that Rari and its co-founders misled investors by stating that Earn pools would automatically rebalance assets into the best yield opportunities. Manual intervention was often required, and Rari Capital sometimes neglected this. Additionally, they promoted high annual percentage yields to attract investors but failed to disclose various fees. As a result, many Earn pool investors lost money.

The SEC also accuses Rari and its co-founders of conducting unregistered broker activities through their management of the Fuse platform. In March 2022, Rari Capital Infrastructure took over Fuse and continued offering unregistered Fuse pool interests and conducting broker activities without proper registration.