Black Cell Technology’s Initial Coin Offering has been stopped by the Hong Kong Futures Commission (SFC) as the ICO constituted an unregistered Collective Investment Scheme (CIS) according to a bulletin that was posted on the SFC’s website on the 19th of March. Due to the applying regulations, Black Cell must refund all the investors who participated so far.

Black Cell was about to launch a mobile app called “Krops” which aimed to be a marketplace for listing agricultural products. The ICO was promoted on Black Cell’s website, and it claimed that the investors would finance the development of the mobile app. In return the investors would have received rights to equity shares of Black Cell. And this indeed is a practice that the SFC considers as a collective investment scheme, thus you have to register the crowdfunding with the SFC before offering the investment opportunity to potential customers.

Black Cell has not made any official statement regarding the case, however it seems they don’t have much choice but to work with the authorities on this one.