For the record

Trade Coin Club and the SEC.

Search my name — Jon Tetreault, or Jonathan Tetreault as the filings say — and you'll find SEC documents from 2022. Here's the record, plainly, with links.

In 2017, early in my time in crypto, I promoted a platform called Trade Coin Club. The SEC later called it a Ponzi scheme and charged its creator with fraud. I wasn't charged with fraud — I was charged with promoting unregistered securities without being a registered broker. The SEC's complaint says I was paid 158 bitcoin for the people I brought in.

I settled. Under the settlement I don't admit or deny the SEC's allegations, and I won't argue with them here or anywhere else. I paid about $781,000 — everything the complaint says I received, plus interest and a civil penalty on top — and accepted a five-year bar on participating in any offering of crypto asset securities, along with the other terms in the public orders. Those terms still bind me, and I keep them.

In my own words: I put my name behind something I hadn't done the work to understand. I can't undo that, and I don't get to call it someone else's fault.

It's why the first lesson I teach is the one I failed: don't trust enthusiasm — especially mine. Verify everything.

The documents are public: the SEC's complaint, the press release, the litigation release, and the 2023 SEC order. Read them before you take my word for anything. That's the point.

— Jonathan "Jon" Tetreault, Massachusetts. Published August 2026.