SEC Chairman Explains Why He Views All Crypto Tokens Other Than Bitcoin as Securities

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler has detailed why he considers all crypto tokens other than bitcoin as securities. While acknowledging that crypto tokens may have different setups, he stressed that “at the core, these tokens are securities.”

The chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler, explained why he believes all crypto tokens other than bitcoin are securities in an interview published Thursday by New York Magazine’s Intelligencer.

Gensler believes that the securities watchdog has all of the legal tools needed to oversee the crypto sector, the publication conveyed, adding that the SEC boss explained that pretty much every sort of crypto transaction already falls under the SEC’s jurisdiction except spot transactions in bitcoin itself and the actual purchase or sale of goods or services with cryptocurrencies.

The SEC chairman was quoted as saying:

Everything other than bitcoin … you can find a website, you can find a group of entrepreneurs, they might set up their legal entities in a tax haven offshore, they might have a foundation, they might lawyer it up to try to arbitrage and make it hard jurisdictionally or so forth.

“They might drop their tokens overseas at first and contend or pretend that it’s going to take six months before they come back to the U.S.,” Gensler continued, without naming specific cryptocurrencies. He emphasized:

But at the core, these tokens are securities because there’s a group in the middle and the public is anticipating profits based on that group.

Following Gensler’s claim that all crypto tokens other than BTC are securities, a number of people took to social media to disagree with the SEC chief. Lawyer Jake Chervinsky tweeted:

Chair Gensler may have prejudged that every digital asset aside from bitcoin is a security, but his opinion is not the law.

“The SEC lacks authority to regulate any of them until and unless it proves its case in court,” Chervinsky emphasized, adding that this must be done “For each asset, every single one, individually, one at a time.” Logan Bolinger, another lawyer, similarly said on Twitter: “In this country, judges — not SEC chairs — ultimately determine what the law means and how it applies. Doesn’t mean his thoughts are irrelevant. They’re just not dispositive.”

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