CannapharmaRx, Inc., Strengthens Management Team

CALGARY, AB / ACCESSWIRE / May 14, 2019 / CannaPharmaRx, Inc. (OTC PINK: CPMD) CannapharmaRx, Inc. (''CPMD'' or the ''Company'') is pleased to announce the strengthening of its management team via the recent hires of John Cassels as Chief Financial Officer and Andrew Steedman as Executive Vice President of Business Development. Additionally, the Board of Directors was expanded with the addition of Richard Orman and Marc Branson. As part of the management changes, Gary Herick resigned as Chief Financial Officer and Director of the Company.

Bios--

John Cassels, C.A., was appointed Chief Financial Officer of the Company in April 2019. Mr. Cassels was previously the Chief Financial Officer of GN Ventures, Ltd. Prior to GN Ventures, Mr. Cassels serves as Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Finance at Wescan Energy Corp. since May 30, 2013. Mr. Cassels served as Secretary of Northern Spirit Resources Inc. (alternate Name: Cascade Resources Inc.). He served as the Interim Chief Financial Officer at Northern Spirit Resources Inc. (alternate Name: Cascade Resources Inc.) since July 31, 2015 until September 1, 2015 and served as its Vice President of Finance. Mr. Cassels has over 35 years of experience in the Canadian natural gas and oil industry as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Paris Energy Inc., Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Finance at Redwood Energy Ltd., Landover Energy Inc., as the Chief Executive Officer of Crown Point Energy Inc. and was a Partner of Purdy & Partners Inc. and served as its Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Cassels has served as a Director of nine small natural gas and oil companies. Mr. Cassels is a Chartered Accountant in Canada and holds a B.A. from Bishop's University in Sherbrooke, Quebec.

Andrew Steedman, was appointed Executive Vice President of Business Development of the Company in April 2019. Previously, Mr. Steedman served as an Advisor to GN Ventures, Ltd., Vice President of NXT Energy Solutions, Inc., President of Wireless Networks, Inc. and worked in Business Development for Nortel Networks, Inc. Mr. Steedman received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering and a MBA both from the University of Calgary.

Marc Branson, was appointed as a director of our Company in April 2019. In addition, since January 2018 has the owner and co-founder of Titan Technologies, Inc., Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, a development stage privately held technology company focused on AI powered block chain solutions for businesses. Since October 2016 he has also been the President and director of Catalina Gold Corp., a publicly traded Canadian company. Previously, from October 2013 through June 2015 he was President and a director of Lightning Ventures Inc., a publicly held manufacturer and distributor of specialty oil and gas products. Since 2007 he has also been President and a director of CapWest Investments., a private investment corporation that focuses on development stage companies. He received a degree in International Business from Open Learning University in 2000 and received a Business Management certificate from Capilano College in 1997.

Richard D. Orman, was appointed as a director of our Company in April 2019. In addition, he is currently the President of PLM Consultants, LTD, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, a privately held business consulting company, a position he has held since 1982. In 1986 Mr. Orman was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta and was appointed to the provincial cabinet as Minister of Career Development and Employment. In 1988 he was appointed Minister of Labour. He was re-elected in 1989 and was then appointed Minster of Energy. He has over 35 years of experience with publicly traded companies in Canada, including Chairman and CEO of Kappa Energy Company, Inc., from 1994 to 2001, a director of Vanguard Oil Corp. from 1998 through 2001, and Executive Vice Chairman of Exceed Energy Company, Inc. from 2003 through 2005, Each of the aforesaid companies had their securities traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange. In addition, he was Vice Chairman of Novatel Inc., a company traded on NASDAQ from 2004 through 2007 and from 2007 through 2011 he was the lead director of Daylight Energy Ltd, also traded on the TSX. From 2015 through February 2019 he was a consultant and senior counsel at Canadian Strategy Group, a government relations firm located in Edmonton, Alberta. In 2012 he was elected to the Board of Directors and currently services as Chairman of the Board of Wescan Energy Corp. a company traded on the TSX. In 2016 he was elected and currently serves an independent non-executive director of Persta Resources, Inc., a company traded on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Mr. Orman received a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Eastern Washington University in 1971.

About CannaPharmaRx, Inc.

CannaPharmaRx is focused on the acquisition and development of state-of-the-art cannabis grow facilities located in Canada. CPMD has recently completed an initial acquisition of a 48,500 square foot cannabis grow facility presently under development and is currently in discussion with other companies regarding potential acquisitions or business combinations. CannaPharmaRx's business strategy is to become a leader in high quality and low-cost production of cannabis in Canada through the development, acquisition and enhancement of existing facilities. CannaPharmaRx is presently targeting acquisitions of companies in the final stages of obtaining cannabis licensee applications or those which are nearing revenue generation. CannaPharmaRx is committed to operating high quality facilities utilizing the latest technology in combined heat and power generation to ensure being a low-cost producer of cannabis. CannaPharmaRx is in the process of completing an application to list its common stock on the Canadian Stock Exchange with initial trading anticipated to being during the second quarter of 2019.

Safe Harbor Statement
This press release may contain forward looking statements which are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from those anticipated or expected, including statements related to the amount and timing of expected revenues and any payment of dividends on our common and preferred stock, statements related to our financial performance, expected income, distributions, and future growth for upcoming quarterly and annual periods. These risks and uncertainties are further defined in filings and reports by the Company with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Actual results and the timing of certain events could differ materially from those projected in or contemplated by the forward-looking statements due to a number of factors detailed from time to time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Among other matters, CannaPharmaRx, Inc. may not be able to sustain growth or achieve profitability based upon many factors including, but not limited to, general stock market conditions. Reference is hereby made to cautionary statements set forth in the company's most recent SEC filings. We have incurred and will continue to incur significant expenses in our expansion of our existing and new service lines, noting there is no assurance that we will generate enough revenues to offset those costs in both the near and long term. Additional service offerings may expose us to additional legal and regulatory costs and unknown exposure(s) based upon the various geopolitical locations where we will be providing services, the impact of which cannot be predicted at this time.

Contact Information:

Attention info@cannapharmarx.com
Investor Relations
Telephone 949.652.6838

SOURCE: CannaPharmaRx, Inc.

Venture Capital Marketplace to Asia with VNX Exchange

VNX Exchange is bringing its tokenized venture capital marketplace to Asia with new Senior Vice President Zing Yang.

From Coinannouncer.com By Eseandre Mordi Nov. 22, 2018

The VNX™ exchange – with operational headquarters in Luxembourg, has begun implementation of its marketplace expansion plans. Such moves by the company are aimed at aptly covering newer territories outside the European axis so that more people can have access to some form of simplified token asset trading opportunities. Hence, the exchange’s action is substantially not unconnected with the perceived need for a viable framework that would facilitate the accomplishment of the company’s innovative business objectives for the cryptocurrency setting.

Consequently, VNX has finished its organizational internal formalities for the appointment of its new senior vice president- who would oversee company affairs in the Asian region. The senior executive ZingYang would be directly concerned with the company’s new business interactions in the Asian continent, and she is expected to execute tokenized digital currency venture asset projects that would paint the VNX’s company name and objectives in a positive limelight.

Functions and objectives of the VNX digital currency marketplace

According to operational objective and roadmap tendencies, the VNX exchange is designed to support an active community of digital asset buyers and sellers, on its tokenized asset venture capital supporting platform. The company’s objectives are directed at creating an impressive liquidity structure for the venture capital front, as well as providing an effective and proven means of fund sourcing for ingenious and prospective businesses- powered on a decentralized protocol, amongst others.

With the VNX exchange services, users can successfully explore the merits of prompt digital asset trading and investments, while leveraging on the value-added services as provided by the platform development and management team. Analysts say that the VNX operation methods are very much relevant in terms of simplifying the many risks and complexities of digital asset venture capital investments. By this, the platform creates an opportunity for both the experienced stakeholders and the newbie investors, to profitably engage in the platform’s hosted services.

Note that the platform assists users in a reasonable way, by enabling risk diversifications from the initial stages of user investment. This part of the framework is important because it shares off too much concentrated risks that could results in substantial losses for the investing user.

In order to ensure the effectiveness of its efforts, the VNX digital venture capital marketplace has also entered into top-notch partnerships with cryptocurrency key players- who would help in creating a synergy that brings good results for all the collaborating firms. One of such partnerships is the VNX and NEM blockchain partnership, which was also recently agreed upon. The collaboration has been able to incorporate an ability to produce different protocols and their corresponding security tokens, which would assist businesses and organizations that are hosted on the NEM network. This achievement fulfills one of the exchange’s foremost objective, which aims at facilitating the creation and provision of tokenized assets.

The VNX founder and boss, Alexander Tkachenko, has expressed the company’s readiness to follow through with seeing to it that digital venture capital investments are given a rightful place priority in the next few years.

Zing Yang’s responsibilities as the new Asian VNX service head

The new vice chief for the Asian market is charged with a number of responsibilities that are considered pivotal to the exchange’s success tendencies (or failures) in the new frontier. Zing Yang’s primary assignments are quite specific, and this would most likely take the bulk of her concentration for the earliest periods of her tenure.

Since the VNX company operations are still very much new in the region, she is expected to basically create some high-level user to company trust, which would allow for greater public participation in the solutions that the platform has to offer.

As part of the schedule for bringing this to light, she would be working to extend VNX company operations to countries such as Singapore, South Korea, and Hong Kong. These are places with significant cryptocurrency usage and investments; however the scope is not intended to limit on these countries alone, in the long run.

Asides this, Yang is charged with a responsibility of creating and enforcing a local footprint for the company, as well as building up a strong ecosystem- that stands the test of time, in the Asian axis. If the company’s intentions for its newfound operation location comes to fulfillment, then the company should have established a major stronghold in the coming days.

The new executive’s appointment comes as a well made choice, considering the fact that Yang has worked extensively in investment management fields, as well as other job descriptions involving public and private equity. She is an expert in digital currency and venture capital investments among others, with several years of active participation plus reasonable contributions made. She is currently a director at the Litecoin foundation, having served in other positions in various firms such as the capital group.

For more information, visit: https://vnx.io/

Source: https://www.coinannouncer.com/vnx-exchange-appoints-zing-yang-to-act-as-its-senior-vice-president-in-the-asian-region/

ICO-Funded Startups Getting a Closer Look From The SEC

SEC tightens the noose on ICO-funded startups

From DecryptMedia.com by Daniel Roberts October 10, 2018

Hundreds of startups that did token sales are finding out they’re in violation of securities law— including many that were sure they did it the right way.

During the past few months, the Securities and Exchange Commission has significantly widened its crackdown on certain initial coin offerings, putting hundreds of cryptocurrency startups at risk.

The SEC sent out a slew of initial information-seeking subpoenas at the start of 2018. Now the agency has returned to many of those companies, and subpoenaed many more—focusing on those that failed to properly ensure they sold their token exclusively to accredited investors.

The agency is exerting pressure on many of those companies to settle their cases. In response, dozens of companies have quietly agreed to refund investor money and pay a fine. But many startups that have been subpoenaed say they are left in the dark struggling to satisfy the SEC’s demands, and are uncertain of how others are handling it, according to conversations with more than 15 industry sources as part of a joint investigation by Yahoo Finance and Decrypt.

The sources, many of whom are employees of companies that were subpoenaed by the SEC or are attorneys for those companies, requested anonymity, because the SEC restricts them from discussing the matter.

ICO funding, which began in 2014, exploded in popularity last year as an alternative method to fund a cryptocurrency startup, rather than the traditional venture capital route. In an ICO, a startup sells its own digital token, typically for later use in the ecosystem the startup plans to build; buyers pay for the token in the cryptocurrencies bitcoin or ether. In the majority of cases, companies that do ICOs have not yet launched any product. Think of an ICO as buying chips for use in a casino that hasn’t been built yet.

It is hard to say precisely how many ICOs occurred during the past four years. ICO Alert says it has tracked more than 5,000 but publicly displays only 3,400 “legitimate” ones. CoinDesk, a leading bitcoin trade publication, lists only 800 in the past two years. More than $20 billion has been raised in ICOs to date, but the ICO boom peaked in January 2018. Concerns over the legality of token sales have had a chilling effect.

The core issue now for every company that did an ICO: Was its “token” a security? And if it was, did the company register its offering with the SEC, or ensure that it qualified for an exemption?

SEC sees most ICOs as securities offerings—and companies failed to comply

Many of the companies that did ICOs called their offering something else, such as a “utility token” or a “SAFT” (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens, an ICO method in which investors buy a reservation for tokens yet to be launched), but the SEC does not care about those labels. It weighs each ICO on a case-by-case basis.

In July 2017, the SEC announced that it viewed the tokens offered by The DAO, an ICO that raised more than $150 million in 2016, as securities. Then, at a Senate hearing in February, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said, “I believe every ICO I’ve seen is a security.”

Capital raising through blockchain requires compliance with federal securities laws https://t.co/IjOxjoVdfK  — SEC Enforcement (@SEC_Enforcement) July 25, 2017

William Hinman, the SEC’s director of corporation finance, provided further clarity in June at Yahoo Finance’s All Markets Summit when he said ether does not appear to be a security, but suggested that most ICOs are securities offerings, and that, “calling the transaction an initial coin offering, or ‘ICO,’ or a sale of a ‘token,’ will not take it out of the purview of the U.S. securities laws.”

Any U.S. company offering a security must register its offering with the SEC, or qualify for an exemption. Amid the ICO boom, virtually none have registered a security offering. Thus, they must meet an exemption. The SEC exemptions include selling only to investors outside the U.S., or selling only to accredited investors, which are individuals with income higher than $200,000 in each of the past two years or a minimum net worth of $1 million.

Ensuring that investors are fully accredited requires, as the SEC spells out plainly, “reviewing documentation, such as W-2s, tax returns, bank and brokerage statements, credit reports and the like.” In other words, it involves a lot more than just checking a box.

Many companies that thought they did properly limit their ICO to accredited investors are now finding out that in the eyes of the SEC, they didn’t.

Robert Cohen, chief of the cyber unit in the SEC’s enforcement division, likens it to a spectrum. When the SEC calls up a company that did an ICO and asks how the company limited its ICO to certain investors, “Some companies tell us the name of the law firm that advised them, explain the know-your-customer procedures they followed, and show us an investor list that is limited to accredited investors,” he says. “At the other end of the spectrum, some point to a website statement about limiting the ICO to some investors, and possibly checkboxes, and that’s it.”

“The law was pretty clear”

Some of the people particularly surprised to be in trouble are those who did their ICO as a SAFT, a designation that was intended specifically to be more compliant with securities law.

But some onlookers have little sympathy. Cardozo Law School professor Aaron Wright, who co-authored a paper that questioned the legality of the SAFT model, says, “There could have been other ways they could have structured it, like selling a digital good to people who actually wanted to use it, instead of predominately to speculative investors. They could have talked to the SEC first. I think the law was pretty clear that if you sell something to an investor, it’s likely a security—folks just wanted to engage in token sales, so they just kind of flouted it.”

In December 2017, the SEC shut down the $15 million ICO of a startup called Munchee and forced the company to refund the buyers. Munchee had advertised that its token would go up in value; promises of financial returns are a red flag for the SEC.

In January 2018, the SEC shut down the ICO of AriseBank, which had raised $600 million of a $1 billion goal, for falsely stating it had bought an FDIC-insured bank. In April 2018, the SEC shut down the $32 million ICO of Centra, which had been promoted by boxer Floyd Mayweather and rapper DJ Khaled, for using “misleading marketing” and “paid celebrities” to make false claims. Last month, the SEC charged TokenLot, which called itself an “ICO Superstore,” with being an unregistered broker-dealer, and charged Crypto Asset Management (CAM) with false marketing and being an unregistered investment company.

Those are just some examples that the SEC announced publicly.

Behind closed doors, many more negotiations are underway. The SEC has gotten dozens of ICOs to refund buyers and pay a fine, simply by reaching out and asking questions.

We received a second subpeona from the SEC, again collecting information from us as investors in a U.S. company. The legal costs of dealing with these are not insignificant. We will not invest in any further U.S. deals until the SEC clarifies token rules. Pivot to Asia. 
— Michael Arrington (@arrington) September 28, 2018

When the SEC reaches out to companies that did an ICO, it is usually through the company’s law firm. The SEC requests a vast trove of documents related to the ICO. Yahoo Finance and Decrypt have obtained communication that the law firm Cooley, which represented many ICOs, sent to one client after an SEC subpoena. The attorney letter warns, “The SEC is likely examining whether [client] should be considered a security under the U.S. federal securities laws… For the purposes of this preservation hold, ‘document’ is defined very broadly.”

Such language is leading many companies to refund their ICOs rather than attempt a legal fight. As one source at a company that got subpoenaed says, “The last thing we want is a press release they put out with only our name on it.”

Refunding tokens

The Fan-Controlled Football League (FCFL), the first ICO to be listed on the mainstream crowdfunding platform Indiegogo (through a partnership with MicroVentures), is one example. FCFL raised $5.2 million last year. In August of this year, MicroVentures quietly returned the money to the initial buyers. 

There’s just one problem with refunding. If an ICO gathered the proper information on its buyers, and hadn’t yet launched its token, returning the money is doable. But for ICOs that have launched their token, refunding is not so simple.

“It’s not even really possible,” says Jony Levin, CEO of Chainalysis. “In a lot of cases people bought tokens in ICOs through exchange accounts at places like Kraken. So you can’t just send tokens back to the address you got them from, because that’s an exchange address. If ICOs are made to refund buyers, it will have to be similar to the Mt. Gox case: you make a public announcement and people have to prove they were a contributor.”

As a way to pacify the SEC, some ICOs are attempting to convert their utility token to a security token. Iconomi, which raised more than $10 million in an ICO, is one example. In a blog post this month, Iconomi wrote that its token holders, “will be able to exchange their ICN tokens for tokenized shares in a joint-stock company presented as eICN tokens. This new structure brings legal clarity for all stakeholders.”

Filecoin, Blockstack, Props, Origin, and TrustToken, the five ICOs that have listed on the platform CoinList, all sold only to accredited investors, and none have launched their actual token yet. A source close to Blockstack says the company sees its token as a utility, but out of caution, chose to treat it like a security and comply with all the relevant securities laws.

“Right now it feels like a massive canyon”

All of this SEC action may sound like very bad news for ICOs, but many in the industry have a more optimistic take: regulatory clarity will bring growth. In addition, more and more companies considering a token sale are now reaching out to the SEC proactively.

“I do think that businesses on the up-and-up can navigate through it, and that in just two or three years we’ll have clarity, and we’ll look back on this time as a speed bump,” says the CEO of a well-known tech company who has closely watched the ICO space. “Of course, if you’re a company that is dealing with an SEC subpoena, right now it doesn’t feel like a speed bump, right now it feels like a massive canyon.”

The lingering lack of clarity has driven a group of crypto companies, led by Ripple, to hire D.C. lobbyists to push Congress on behalf of the industry.

From the SEC’s perspective, there is no lack of clarity. The sniff tests are the same as they have been for decades. The SEC is applying the same securities laws to ICOs that it always applies.

“Everybody’s holding their breath for the SEC to create some kind of coin rule, and they’re not going to,” says a securities attorney at one high-profile Silicon Valley firm. “They’re applying the same laws, the same statutes, the same rules, to stocks and bonds and everything else.”

In other words, there’s even a lack of clarity around whether there is a lack of regulatory clarity.

Source: https://decryptmedia.com/2018/10/10/sec-tightens-the-noose-on-ico-funded-startups/

This story is a collaboration between Yahoo Finance and Decrypt, with additional reporting by Josh Quittner.

Blockchain Venture Capital

Blockchain Venture Capital