SEC Charges DeFi Platform Rari Capital and its Founders With Misleading Investors and Acting as Unregistered Brokers

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced settled charges against Rari Capital, Inc., a supposed decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, and its co-founders, Jai Bhavnani, Jack Lipstone, and David Lucid, for misleading investors and engaging in unregistered broker activity in connection with their operation of two blockchain-based investment platforms that, at their peak, collectively held crypto assets worth more than $1 billion. Rari Capital also settled SEC charges that it conducted unregistered offerings of three securities tied to those platforms. In a separate order, Rari Capital Infrastructure LLC, which took over operations from Rari Capital in 2022, settled charges that it engaged in unregistered securities offerings and unregistered broker activity.