The State Attorney General of New York asked the United States stock and values commission to openly declared the Ether of Ethereum (ETH) was a security, not a merchandise, during the prosecution of the state of Kucoin in 2023, according to a document revealed by Coinbase Inc. in a tojo of agency communications published Wednesday.
Shamiso Maswoswe, head of the Office of Investor Protection for the AG of New York, expected the Federal Control Agency to intervene during the judicial dispute when presenting a letter on its opinion ETH, according to a document produced through a request of the Law of Freedom of Coinbase Information submitted to the SEC.
“We would like to request that the SEC submit an amicus in support of the argument that Ether is a security,” he wrote in the application. “Whether it is or not, it will not be available in our case (we have authority on values and products), but I think it would be beneficial for the protection of investors that a court maintains that the ether is security.”
This and other private messages related to cryptography sent and received within the SEC were made available on Wednesday, since Coinbase opened online access to more documents that was obtained in legal fights with federal authorities. The company’s previous documents versions included a variety of federal letters deposit Insurance Corp. that supported the content of the industry that US banking regulators actively pressed banks to maintain a distance from cryptography.
In New York’s request 2023, he did not obtain what he requested, since the SEC kept the eth views of the agency largely blocked. The American agency had pointed out an early opinion that ETH was probably a merchandise, then it seemed to falter after the protocol changed to a mechanism of stagnation test consensus, but the SEC finally fell into a position that involves ETH is a merchandise, like Bitcoin (BTC).
Read more: New York Attorney General Alleges that Ether is a security in Kucoin’s demand
Such a fight on jurisdictional definitions is in the heart of the long dispute of the cryptographic industry with US regulators, which has now decreased that President Donald Trump has established a cryptographic tone in his administration, even with his election of the new president of the SEC, Paul Atkins. The agency has been constantly issuing states on aspects of the digital asset sector that it considers outside its scope of values.
In the case of New York, the result did not matter much, because its Financial Services Department regulates both values and products under the same roof, unlike the federal government supervision regime that is divided between the SEC and the Trade Commission of Futures of Basic Products.
In December 2023, New York obtained a $ 22 million agreement with Kucoin for not registering as an exchange in the State, in which the state attorney general Letitia James said that “it would continue to take measures against any company that blatantly descends the law and endangers the savings and investments and investments of the New York.”
Read more: Kucoin will pay $ 22 million, leave New York to resolve state demand
Other communications of the SEC show a continuous interest in the categorization of cryptographic assets and the supervision gaps of the United States in digital assets.
An email revealed that the agency was thinking about 2021 about Ripple and XRP, and if the block chain was centralized or decentralized. The SEC had begun a long -lasting legal battle with Ripple the previous year when it accused the company of operating illegally in the United States, but that case recently ended in favor of Ripple, since the company even received money from the agency that had been required in a previous fine.
