The New York State Prosecutor General asked the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States to openly declare Ether (ETH) of Ethereum was a security, not a commodity, during prosecution by the state of Kucoin in 2023, according to a document revealed by Coinbase Inc. in a drop in agency communications published on Wednesday.
Shamiso Maswoswe, head of the investor protection office for the New York AG, hoped that the federal guard dog would weigh during the court dispute by depositing a dissertation on his view of the ETH, according to a document produced by a request for Coinbase of the Freedom of Information Act filed with the SEC.
“We would like to ask that the dry deposited an friendly in support of the argument that Ether is security,” she wrote in the request. “Whether or not it will be a device in our case (we have authority on securities and raw materials) – but I think it would be beneficial for the protection of investors so that a court has that ether is a guarantee.”
This and other private messages linked to the crypto sent and received inside the SEC were made available on Wednesday while Coinbase opened access to more documents than it is won in legal fights with the federal authorities. The previous versions of the company’s documents included a range of letters from the Federal Deposit Corp. Who saved industry claims that American banking regulators have actively put pressure on the banks to maintain a distance from the crypto.
In New York’s request in 2023, he did not get what he asked because the SEC kept the views of the eth of the agency largely locked. The American agency had reported an early opinion that the ETH was probably a commodity, then it seemed to vacillate after the protocol moved to a mechanism of evidence of proof of implementation, but the dry finally fell into a position implying that ETH was a commodity, like Bitcoin (BTC).
Find out more: the prosecutor general of New York alleys that Ether is security in the Kucoin trial
Such a struggle on jurisdictional definitions is at the heart of the long -standing dispute of the cryptographic industry with American regulators, who has now attenuated that President Donald Trump has set a friendly tone in his administration, including with his choice of the new SEC President, Paul Atkins. The agency has regularly published declarations on the aspects of the digital asset sector which he considers outside of his field of titles.
In the case of New York, the result did not matter much because its ministry of financial services regulates both securities and basic products under one roof, unlike the monitoring of the federal government which is divided between the dry and the commodity future trading commission.
In December 2023, New York obtained a settlement of $ 22 million with Kucoin so as not to register as a state scholarship, in which the public prosecutor of the Letitia James noted that it would continue to take measures against any business which does not take the fact of not taking into account the law and endangering the savings and investments of New Yorkers “.
Read more: Kucoin to pay $ 22 million, get out of New York to settle the state pursuit
Other dry communications show continuous interest in the categorization of cryptographic assets and the supervisory gaps in the United States in digital assets.
An email revealed that the agency thought in 2021 in Ripple and XRP, and that the blockchain was centralized or decentralized. The SEC had started a long -standing legal battle with Ripple the previous year when it accused the company of operating illegally in the United States, but this case has recently ended in favor of Ripple – the company even recovering money from the agency which had been requested in a previous fine.
