The first day of may Joseph Lubin, co-founder of the Ethereum Foundation, spoke at the Collision tech conference in New Orleans, in which he stated that the Fund was “absolutely indifferent” to discussions on whether the air security.
“We long enough communicated with lawyers in the United States and in other countries. We are absolutely calm, because Ethereum is not a security and it never was. Most influential regulators understand that Ethereum represents,” said Lubin.
On the same day The Wall Street Journal wrote about that now ETH is in the so-called regulatory “grey area”, referring to sources familiar with the matter.
The sources expressed particular concern at the first allocation of the ETH in 2014, when the Fund collected in one of the first cryptocurrency ICO more than 31 000 BTC (worth $18.3 million).
These funds were used to develop the Ethereum platform, and some regulators believe that investors might have bought a live, expecting a rise in asset price that will bring them profit is based “on the efforts of others.”
According to the test Howie, to determine whether the tool or a commercial operation investment contract, this fact indicates that the air — quality paper. So the Fund was obligated to register the sale of coins in the Commission on securities and exchange Commission (SEC) in 2014.
Lubin stressed that Ethereum will really fail this test, because the investors share a stake in a common enterprise:
“Taking into account all subjects, to provide their resources to run the platform you need to pay them for what they did… It’s a way to access a shared resource of computing power”.
It is worth noting that there are arguments against the classification of Ethereum as securities. So influential former controller of the U.S. government Gary Gensler (Gary Gensler) believes that the fact that the coin is now produced with the help of mining can help business ETH. However, Gensler reiterated that the presale 2014 most likely did not meet the established requirements.
