Elio Motors needs cash to make the car it promised back in 2015 and is using cryptocurrency to do it.
The sale of cryptocurrency is highly regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. What ISN’T so regulated is the pre-sale of tokens. Elio Motor presumably needs money now in a bad way and as per their official press release they released earlier this week (Sept 20, 2018) Elio Motors is looking to raise $25 Million once the actual sale of Eliocoin hits the market. But, as mentioned, there’s a hot pre-sale going on and the first person to buy it is Overstock.com’s founder and CEO Patrick M. Byrne.
Overstock.com was in the news earlier this year for bringing some much-needed relief Elio Motor’s way by buying $2.5 million of newly issued shares of the Elio Common stock at $2.75 a share. That initial price has slowly risen even before a car has been made for a customer to $4.70 a share at this moment.
“This is a watershed moment for Elio Motors,” said Paul Elio, CEO. “Our newest partnerships with Dr. Byrne and other major institutional investors have further crystallized our vision of bringing the Elio to production. We look forward to the launch of ElioCoin and offering secondary trading on tZERO’s security token platform.”
Currently, there is no timeline when the actual main sale of ElioCoin will hit the market but rest assured it will be conducted pursuant to Regulation D of the Securities Act which states that smaller companies don’t have to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission. A quick bit of googling and it looks like they’ll be using Rule 506 to carry this out as the previous rules 505 and 504 only allow up to $5 million to be raised. With 506, all investors…
must be accredited investors and the issuer must take reasonable steps to determine that the purchaser is an accredited investor.
I haven’t been following along with Elio Motors and their latest drama but I do know that there are literally thousands of frustrated pre-purchasers waiting for a car. Elio Motors only has so many tricks up its sleeve to raise money before they should come out with a product.
And with technology advancing at leaps and bounds as the day’s tick by, their $6,800 car that gets 84 MPG gets less and less relevant.
Some car outlets offer no opinion on if this latest money grab will work in the long run.
I’m saying it now, it won’t.
