Securities or Commodities? what do you guys say

Author: Andrew Throuvalas, Decrypt; Compiler: Songxue, Golden Finance

While the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is waging a legal battle in the cryptocurrency space, Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin is not letting up.

Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin speaks at Camp Ethereal in Wyoming, March 2022. Image credit: Chie Endo

Asked whether regulators might consider ethereum (ETH) to be a security, Consensys CEO explained in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday that a regulatory ruling on ethereum has already been made.

“The SEC has spoken up,” he said, referring to former SEC Commissioner Bill Hinman’s 2018 speech on crypto securities and ethereum.

Hinman received repeated warnings from colleagues that the speech could mislead the market into thinking the SEC had deemed the asset to be a non-security, according to new filings.

A security is a financial instrument, usually (but not always) related to some kind of investment contract. A commodity, by contrast, is a basic or natural commodity such as gold, wheat, or cattle.

“The CFTC has made it clear on multiple occasions that they consider ethereum to be a commodity,” Lubin added.

While Commodity and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Rostin Benham agrees that many cryptocurrencies are securities, he also sees three top assets—Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Tether (USDT)—as commodities. the agency’s jurisdiction. **

Rostin Benham, Chairman of the U.S. Commodity and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)

In contrast, **SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has only publicly acknowledged that Bitcoin itself is a commodity. **

On the topic of Ethereum, Gensler has been tight-lipped. Some videos from his time as an MIT professor show that he once thought it was a security, while others show that he believed that by 2018, Ethereum had transformed from a security to a commodity.

Members of Congress, including Cynthia Lummis and Kirsten Gillibrand, are drafting legislation to address the issue, and say it’s not the same as commodity futures The Trade Commission (CFTC) has agreed that Ethereum is as much a commodity as Bitcoin. "

“At this point, it’s really a foregone conclusion,” Lubin said. “There may be one or two regulators in the U.S. who are reluctant to admit that ethereum is not a security, but I don’t know why that would be. "

Earlier this month, the SEC sued Binance and Coinbase, alleging that more than a dozen assets listed on their platforms are securities, including Paxos-issued stablecoin BUSD.