Security vs. not a security has always been an ongoing debate in the crypto ecosystem. With the multi-billion dollar crypto market growing, investors have been waiting on how various financial regulatory agencies will regulate it.
In fact, at the heart of SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple, the matter of dispute remains to be the same. The agency filed a lawsuit against the blockchain payments firm back in December 2020. They argued that its native XRP tokens fell under the “security” category and not the “currency” category.
On Tuesday, Gene Hoffman, the CCO of blockchain project Chia took to Twitter to state that PoW assets like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin are not securities, while the likes of Ethereum, XRP, Solana, and Cardano are. he explicitly tweeted,
“BTC, LTC, DOGE, XCH not securities. ETH, XRP, FTT, SOL, AVAX, ADA always have been.”
In fact, a couple of days back, when Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin opined on what he is the most excited about in 2023, a community member outrightly questioned him,
“Did you register with the SEC yet?”
Additionally, it is worth recalling that Ripple sold XRP to build a blockchain network. Ethereum parallelly floated a coin offering to raise its funds. In the Twitter thread, Hoffman went on to add,
“It’s just you shouldn’t be selling your project’s coins to investors. There are well-known ways to raise money legally in the US.”
Regulators have remained tight-lipped about specifics and majorly steered away from commenting in public with respect to this topic. In fact, whenever they have been asked to draw a line of distinction between the two categories, they’ve given a blunt response.
SEC Regulations To ‘Crush’ Cryptos?
Rich Dad Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki, however, opined recently that Bitcoin is classified as a “commodity” like gold, silver, and oil. Notably, such a classification would bring the asset under the purview of the CFTC instead of the SEC.
Kiyosaki went on to add that most tokens were contrarily classified as “securities” and SEC’s regulations will “crush” them. As a result, he stated, he was only buying more Bitcoin.
Furthermore, Michael Saylor recently compared XRP to Ethereum in a podcast and gave both assets the “unregistered security” tag. The Bitcoin maximalist went on to assert that pretty much all altcoins were securities, and should be subjected to SEC enforcement. He said,
“I think the best thing for the world would be if the SEC pretty much shuts down all of it. It’s all unethical.“
Read More: Ethereum, Ripple Are Committing Securities Fraud: Michael Saylor