Bitcoin Forum

Surprised there's not a thread on this.

The SEC are scheduled to have a  meeting today regarding whether projects like ETH and XRP are securities. Dunno if and when the actual verdict arrives.

My guess is that it's unlikely they'll go for a yes for the biggest projects. It's more work for them and ETH at least has done enough to evolved beyond that classification. I'm sure many an ICO is going to get a raping.

Would a yes classification for some give Bitcoin's value a knock or a fillip? Would the whole alt market have a major wobble?

Since Ethereum was initially crowdfunded and Ripple is centrally issued I could imagine the SEC having a weak case in favour of these coins being securities. If they deem these coins securities, it may affect Iota and other centrally issued / crowdfunded currencies as well. Ethereum Classic would be an interesting edge case, since they never received any form of crowdfunding despite being an Ethereum hard fork (well, technically it was Ethereum that forked, but that's a different matter). That being said, I personally doubt that Ethereum and Ripple satisfy the preconditions required for being classified as securities.

Either way I think Bitcoin will be largely unaffected. Should these kind of centrally issued / crowdfunded coins be classfied as securities we may see some capital flowing from alts towards Bitcoins though.

Yes I think the same too, bitcoin and Etheruim maybe both a cryptocurrency but Bitcoin has a higher market and is more popular. So if the sec. will in favor Eth this is another success for crypto but it would not a affect bitcoin I believe.

The market size has no value for the SEC. It doesn't help it to judge anything. And I know when the SEC starts to audit something it usually doesn't end well. I remember reading a long audition from the SEC and Scoville Charles and believe me, they are a real snake and far to be uninformed

According to this - https://twitter.com/cryptomedicated/status/993555494311690240?s=21

It's all a load of rubbish regarding today at least. There may be something later in the month. Ah well.

i suspect it'll still be awhile before we get sweeping standards for this stuff.

ETH as a security seems like a longshot, trickiness of pre-mine (ICO) aside. genesis block ETH is fungible with mined ETH, which is not centrally issued. i don't recall the ICO being marketed as an investment with promised returns like the ICOs of today, either. ETH clearly has utility beyond investment (if it could really be deemed an investment at all).


i'm curious to see how they rule on ripple. XRP is essentially useless and centrally issued. while not legally overlapping, i think the 2013 guidance from FINCEN (and subsequent ruling against ripple labs) gives us some idea about the level of centralized control ripple labs has regarding asset issuance: https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/fincen-fines-ripple-labs-inc-first-civil-enforcement-action-against-virtual


i think the ICO market has priced in a lot of the expected negativity, and i don't expect any legitimately mined cryptocurrencies to be deemed securities. all in all, i don't see it being significant. we're already in a bear market; we should expect more of the same.