The United States SEC and its president Gary Gensler, have maintained for more than a year the conviction that ether (ETH), the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, is a non-denominational security. registered in that country. This is revealed by court documents to which Fox Business reporter Eleanor Terrett had access.
The documentation, which follows the lawsuit by the company Consensys against that regulatory office based in Washington DC, reflects the understanding that the SEC has had with respect to ETH, an asset that is seen as a security in those files.
According to Terrett, the documents indicate that the SEC believed that “possible offers and sales of certain securities”, including, among others, ETH, were executed since last 2018. In this way, the SEC would finally be recognizing its position with respect to ether. As well as their vision of it as an asset that should be regulated by this office.
The SEC began a legal campaign to classify ETH as a security in 2024. In March, the regulatory agency sent subpoenas to companies related to the Ethereum Foundation and requested documents and financial records to learn about their interactions with that organization. All in search of taking ETH towards security classification.
Now, if the SEC decided to recognize ETH as a security, the entire performance of that asset and the market would be affected. This is because changes and new regulatory compliance rules could be implemented, many of which are not in line with the thoughts of ecosystem members.
Added to this is that the SEC would contradict its own considerations and guidelines, recalling that, under the management of former president Jay Clayton, the regulatory body established its position on ETH and clarified that, along with bitcoin (BTC), this asset is not a security. worth.
In 2019, Clayton suggested that ETH was not a security, as stated by the office's then director of corporate finance, William Hinman, for whom the second most valued cryptocurrency on the market is a security.
The diatribe surrounding the recognition or not of ETH as a security occurs when the SEC studies the approval or rejection of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) of the spot price of ether. Investment vehicles that support BTC, approved in January 2024.
The SEC has extended the decision on these products on several occasions since they were first presented in 2023. Although their future is uncertain, there are indications that these vehicles could be approved. For example, the incorporation of ETH ETFs into the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC).
