The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that VanEck will pay a $1.75 million civil penalty.

The investment management company, which also runs a spot bitcoin ETF under the ticker HODL, was charged with failing to disclose the role of a social media influencer for its Social Sentiment ETF (BUZZ).

The ETF was launched in 2021 and was backed by Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy. BUZZ aims to track stocks popular on social media. 

It tracks 75 large-cap US stocks “which exhibit the highest degree of positive investor sentiment and bullish perception based on content aggregated from online sources including social media, news articles, blog posts and other alternative…

Read more on Blockworks