Hinman risked contradicting himself with the claim that Ether was not a security, recently released SEC internal discussion documents show.
documents recently released papers showing edits to a 2018 speech by former Securities and Exchange Commission corporate finance division director Bill Hinman, suggest that the editors were concerned that their statement could undermine the idea that Ether (ETH) was a value.
This could carry the risk of locking the agency into a position that would be difficult for it to change at a later date.warn the comments of the SEC.
“Even with the caveats in the sentence, it appears that it would be difficult for the agency to take a different position on Ether in the future,” the edits of the documents say. “Furthermore, the rest of the paragraph strongly implies that the reasoning applies to Ether.”
The Hinman documents refer to internal messages from the SEC relating to a 2018 speech given by Hinman in which he said that, Although cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether may start out as securities, they may become more of a “commodity” once they become sufficiently decentralized.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said on June 12 that the documents would be “well worth the wait.”
The disclosure of the documents comes at an extremely turbulent time for the cryptocurrency industry. The SEC’s motion to freeze the assets of Binance.US will also be heard in federal court on June 13, following a series of legal actions against the exchange.
The SEC first took legal action against Ripple in December 2020, alleging that the sale of its native XRP token (XRP) represented an unregistered securities offering. Ripple has since denied that XRP is a security, claiming that it does not meet the Howey test.
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