In an interview by @bluerocktalk (Connie Willis), Jared Rice Snr, of Arise Bank discusses events that have put a substantial obstacle in the way of the ICO and the project.

The interview by Willis is of the style where the interviewee tells the story, with minimal prompting. Jared Rice Snr, discusses a raid on the offices of Arise Bank.

"I got woke up with guns pointed at me. So, you know, put your hands where we can see 'em, so obviously we did. It was pretty weird. At first, we didn't even know why they were here. They bought us outside, handcuffed us."

He goes on to say that the agents who arrived were all armed, one even carrying a shield. In the interview, he states that it was overkill.

"... they showed up, wanting to know where everything was. We gave them everything they asked for. They asked for passwords to accounts. We gave it to them."

No one was hurt, or injured according to the interview, but it does appear that, as Jared Rice Snr continues in the interview: "They seized a lot of the servers, the computers, the phones."

"AriseBank is a vision." ; Rice Snr continues, promising that this will be fought, and it is just the beginning of a battle for decentralization.

The vision remains:

AriseBank is the first decentralized banking product ever created and features one of the largest cryptocurrency platforms ever built, with services like AriseID, aEx, aiExchanger, aTransfer, AriseCard, aTMs, aPocket, aPay and more. aBank is completely decentralized, which means it's never hosted in our data center and we never touch your money. It's entirely hosted on your desktop and mobile devices.

I highly recommend that you check out the full interview. It is best to hear it for yourself.

This raid puts the vision of Arise at significant risk, and may cripple the movement, however, Rice remains hopeful, and wants to continue with his fight to decentralize banking. There will be more to come on this news in the future.

SEC claims that Arise is a security, while Rice contends that its a utility token to be used on the platform itself. The Arise team state that they will be releasing an official release on the events that occurred soon. Thanks to Connie Willis for first bringing this news to the public.

Edit:

From the Telegram channel, put together by @plaguewind: