The Director of Corporate Finance of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), William Hinman, said on Thursday, June 14th, that he would not categorize Ethereum (ETH) as security. Afterward, some experts from the cryptocurrency community came out and shared with their social networks followers their opinions on the issue, expressing their support for and opposition to the Hinman’s announcement.
Peter Van Valkenburgh, the Director of Research at the Coin Center, said that Hinman’s claim is a reasonable reading of the legislation, in line with earlier pronouncements. In his view, this is encouraging news for the decentralization process.
After the SEC announcement, Valkenburgh was glad that the agency concurred with the analysis he exposed in an article, and said to TheVerge.com the following:
With this guide, the SEC is showing that taking a pro-innovation approach does not have to come at the expense of protecting investors.
Peter Van Valkenburgh, Research Director at Coin Center
Other cryptocurrency community experts expressed opinions on the SEC announcement that Ethereum (ETH) will not be cataloged as a security
A very different perspective was voiced by Preston Byrne, a member of the UK’s Adam Smith research institute and a blockchain technology researcher, on his website. Byrne blogged that it was obscure to him how, as the SEC puts it, tokens start their existence as investment contracts, and then they lose that status by avoiding enforcement action for four years with success.
Marco Santori, the President & Chief Legal Officer at Blockchain.com, pointed out that the SEC provided very straightforward guidelines on what it considers to be a security, however, the vast majority of tokens circulating today fall within the definition. Consequently, cryptocurrency exchange platforms, OTC operators, and custody wallets that handle these tokens must first be registered as Alternative Exchange Systems (ATS), and then not accept unauthorized customers, he said.
However, it is essential to bear in mind that Hinman’s declarations were not made in an official statement and did not constitute a revision of the U.S. Securities Act or the opinion of SEC as an institute.
