WASHINGTON—The Securities and Exchange Commission on 12 January sued Genesis Global Capital and Gemini Trust Company over a $900m crypto-lending program that allegedly violated investor-protection laws.

The SEC filed its civil lawsuit in Manhattan federal court alleging that Genesis should have registered the product, which would have required providing clients with detailed financial disclosures. The companies began marketing the program to individual investors in February 2021 and raised billions of dollars’ worth of crypto assets from hundreds of thousands of investors, the SEC said.