The commission said it is due to its unauthorised presale and lack of regulatory approval.

In a public notice, SEC stated that the promoters or issuers of $PUN are not registered to oper­ate in any capacity within the Nigerian capital market.

The commission stated that “the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission has been drawn to several online pub­lications blatantly advertising un­authorised presale of Cryptocoin termed ‘PUNISHER COIN’ aka ‘$PUN’.

Particularly perturbing is the write-up by Daily Trust e-paper: “Cryptos to Buy: Why Punisher Coin Could Join Ava­lanche and Chainlink as a Top Investment Pick”.

The commission informed the public that neither “‘PUN­ISHER COIN’ aka ‘$PUN’ nor its promoters have been vetted nor registered by the commission to either promote, launch, sale, trade or solicit investments from the Ni­gerian public”.

According to the commis­sion’s preliminary investigations, Punisher Coin falls under the cat­egory of “meme coins,” digital assets typically characterised by the absence of tangible utility or underlying projects.

“Further investigation has revealed that Punisher Coin or $PUN is a meme coin. Meme coins generally have no use case, intrinsic value or tangible projects backing them. Any attributed value to meme coin is usually linked to its promoters or the com­munity effort which most of­ten than not are susceptible to pump and dump schemes (a form of fraudulent activ­ity that involves promoters spreading false or mislead­ing information to create a buying frenzy that “pumps” up the price of a ‘coin’ and then “dumps” the coin by selling their own coins at the inflated price. Once the pro­moters dump their coins and stop hyping the coin, the coin price typically falls and inves­tors lose money)”, SEC stated.

SEC highlighted that the val­ue of such coins is often driven by hype and social media buzz, making them vulnerable to market manipulation through schemes commonly known as pump and the SEC explained that these schemes involve pro­moters inflating the price of the coin through misleading claims, only to sell their holdings at the peak, leaving other investors ex­posed to significant losses when the hype fade dump.

“The public is therefore strongly warned to be wary about investing in the purported presale of Punisher Coin ($PUN) as any person who invests in such a scheme, does so at his/her own risk.

“The commission similarly reminds investing public of the need to always verify the authen­ticity of crypto/virtual or digital assets, the registration status of its promoters and trading platform via the commission’s dedicated portal before indulging in any form of virtual or digital assets investment”, the commis­sion added.