- The SEC has been leading a crypto crack down in the U.S, making it extremely difficult for crypto entities to operating in the U.S
- Hinman risked contradicting himself over the statement Ether isn’t a security, unsealed SEC internal discussion documents show.
- These documents have shown the corruption within the SEC and brought hope to those crypto entities fighting back against the SEC.
Newly released documents showing edits made to a 2018 speech by former director of the Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) corporate finance division Bill Hinman suggest the editors were concerned his statement might undermine the idea that Ether is security.
The SEC comments warn that this could risk locking the agency into a position it would find hard to change later.
“Even with the caveats in the sentence, it seems that it would be difficult for the agency to take a different position on Ether in the future,” the edits to the documents read. “Further, the rest of the paragraph strongly implies that the thinking applies to Ether.”
The Hinman documents refer to internal SEC messages concerning a 2018 speech by Hinman in which he said that while cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether may start as securities, they can become something more akin to a commodity once they become sufficiently decentralized.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said on June 12 that the documents would prove “well worth the wait.”
The unsealing of the documents comes amid an extremely turbulent time for the crypto industry. June 13 also sees the federal court hear the SEC’s motion to freeze the assets of Binance.US, following on from a spate of legal action against the exchange.
The SEC first took legal action against Ripple in December 2020, alleging that the sale of its native XRP (XRP) token represented an unregistered securities offering. Since then, Ripple has denied XRP as a security, arguing it does not satisfy the Howey test.
