The Securities and Exchange Commission’s much heralded “plain English” guidance on what makes an ICO a security wasn’t the good news many people thought it was. That is, wrapped in nicer language, the conclusion reached on May 16 by the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance, which had 11 attorneys and its chairman, Ron Quaranta, studying the document for nearly six weeks.
The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday released its long-awaited (and long-promised) “plain English” guidance designed to help determine if initial coin offerings (ICOs) must register as securities.
Hester Peirce doesn’t want the government to protect you from dumb cryptocurrency investments. Speaking at a taping of Laura Shin’s Unchained podcast at NYU’s Stern School of Business on March 26, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s “Crypto Mom”—a nickname she picked up after dissenting from the commission’s June 2018 decision not to approve a cryptocurrency exchange traded fund (ETF)—expressed a belief that her agency should be focused on protecting securities investors from fraud, not hindering speculation.
Ripple announced plenty of good news at its crypto orgy SWELL the last two days, including the long-awaited launch of XRapid, the international remittance protocol that uses XRP. Crypto investors were generally pleased with what they heard and saw with the price of XRP essentially doubling in the week leading up to the gathering. But at least some thoughtful observers were waiting for a more fundamental question to be definitively addressed: Is XRP a security? Two different threads on XRPChat used the “800 lbs. gorilla” metaphor to discuss what was on everyone’s mind—whether the SEC would a) declare XRP a commodity, as it essentially has done with bitcoin and Ethereum,…
