The SEC Comes for Ethereum (Again)

TL;DR

• The SEC simply filed a lawsuit in opposition to Consensys (creators of MetaMask), claiming that their staking companies are “provided and offered as funding contracts and [are], due to this fact, securities.”

Full Story

In case you grew up with a youthful sibling, you’re in all probability aware of the next kind situation:

Mother tells you to cease hitting one another → however you continue to have vengeance to put down → so begin destroying your siblings toys.

(Positive, you simply ripped the top off Eric’s beloved childhood teddy bear…however you’re nonetheless abiding by mother’s ‘no hitting one another’ decree).

Effectively, seems previous habits die laborious.

The SEC might have stopped going on the throat of Ethereum, however now it’s attacking the businesses that help it.

Particularly: Consensys (creators of the world’s hottest Ethereum pockets, MetaMask).

This time round they’re claiming that MetaMask’s staking companies are “provided and offered as funding contracts and [are], due to this fact, securities.”

Now, a lot to the frustration of our household, we’re not attorneys…

However this looks like one of many longer photographs the SEC has taken in latest reminiscence.

They’ve simply categorized Ethereum (and by proxy/precedent, Ethereum-like merchandise) as commodities (‘issues’ like oil & gold) — i.e. not securities (enterprises).

Staking pays customers curiosity on their ETH (a commodity), the identical manner banks pay prospects curiosity on their money holdings (additionally a commodity)…

So the SEC is about to go and combat a case the place its largest hurdle is self-imposed (its latest categorization of ETH being a commodity).

We don’t get it. However it’s good to know they’re seemingly preventing a dropping battle.