Is crypto a commodity or a security?
The crypto industry waits anxiously for the decision of Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District Court of New York on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) versus Ripple Corporation case. Ripple owns the popular XRP crypto token, which is currently still in the Top 10 of Coinmarketcap.com, a popular token-tracking website.
The SEC charged in December 2020 that “Ripple raised funds, beginning in 2013, through the sale of digital assets known as XRP in an unregistered securities offering to investors in the U.S. and worldwide. Ripple also allegedly distributed billions of XRP in exchange for non-cash consideration, such as labor and market-making services.”
In addition, the charge alleges that company executives Christian Larsen and Bradley Garlinghouse “also effected personal unregistered sales of XRP totaling approximately $600 million.” It further alleges that “the defendants failed to register their offers and sales of XRP or satisfy any exemption from registration, in violation of the registration provisions of the federal securities laws.”
This case goes beyond the survival of Ripple and XRP. It actually lays the predicate for the SEC to charge many of the other cryptos as securities. The trading of commodities like sugar, wheat, oil and gold are governed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and much of the crypto industry would prefer to see itself regulated under this regime. The price of crypto depends on buyer versus seller sentiment driven by a variety of factors such as individual token news, but also macro factors like inflation and employment which also influence other commodity prices.
Generally, when the following happens, the price of crypto goes up. These events include excess
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