According to the recent complaint by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Bittrex, the securities regulator insists that a few crypto asset tokens were offered and sold as investment contracts and are securities. The news follows the SEC’s designation of several crypto assets as securities, including the case against Terraform Labs, which insists that LUNA and UST were sold as unregistered securities. Additionally, a lawsuit initiated by New York attorney general Letitia James against Kucoin insists that ethereum is also an unregistered security.
Lawsuits Against Crypto Exchanges Bring Lack of Clarity Over Security vs. Commodity Status to the Forefront
This year, U.S. regulators are designating a number of crypto assets as unregistered securities, and the allegations are buried in lawsuits against several crypto exchanges. Bittrex is the latest crypto exchange to be sued this year, following lawsuits against trading platforms such as Binance US, Kucoin, and Coinex, after the SEC accused Bittrex of operating “an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency.” In the lawsuit against Bittrex, the SEC insists that DASH, ALGO, TKN, NGC, and OMG are unregistered securities.
As an example, on page 35, the SEC emphasized that “investors in OMG had a reasonable expectation of profits based on the efforts of others” while discussing the Omisego Project. The securities regulator claims that “materials available at the time of the [initial coin offering (ICO)] indicated that the development of the platform by the OMG Network team could lead to profits for OMG token holders.” On page 37, the SEC discusses DASH, and the regulator emphasizes that “purchasers of DASH invested in a common enterprise.”
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Author: Jamie Redman