The number of cryptocurrencies that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accused of being “securities” has risen to 61, after adding a few more from its lawsuit against cryptocurrency exchange, Binance.
The 61 cryptocurrencies accused of being “securities” have emerged through several open SEC cases in which – within the texts of its complaints – the SEC has characterized them as such.
The most recent
In the most recent case against Binance, the SEC added another ten cryptocurrencies to the securities category:
- BNB
- BUSD
- SOL
- ADA
- MATIC
- ATOM
- SAND
- MANA
- AXS
- COTI
Which preceded them?
Other notable cryptocurrencies that the SEC deemed as securities are XRP, with which it is in a multi-year legal battle, LBRY and ALGO, which it named along with five others when it indicted Bittrex last April.
Previously, the SEC came named 16 other cryptocurrencies as securities when it accused Terraform Labs of fraud last February. Among them are LUNC, USTC, MIR and about 13 Mirrored Assets (mAssets) that aimed to copy the price of stocks like Apple and Tesla.
Movable securities 10% so far
With securities charges now weighing on 61 cryptocurrencies, the SEC has set its sights on over $100 billion in total market capitalization or about 10% of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization, which currently stands at $1.09 trillion.
Recall that SEC Chairman Gary Gensler claimed that “all cryptocurrencies except Bitcoin” are securities and fall under the agency’s jurisdiction. The cryptocurrency data site, CoinMarketCap, lists about 25,500 cryptocurrencies.
The SEC’s long list.
In summary, the SEC has classified these 48 cryptocurrencies as securities:
XRP, Telegram’s Gram (TON), LBRY Credits (LBC), OmiseGo (OMG), DASH (DASH), ALGO, Naga (NGC), Monolith (TKN), IHT Real Estate (IHT), Power Ledger (POWR), Kromatica (KROM), DFX Finance (DFX), Amp (AMP), Rally (RLY), Rari Governance Token (RGT), DerivaDAO (DDX), XYO Network (XYO) , Liechtenstein Cryptoasset Exchange (LCX), Kin (KIN) Salt Lending (SALT), Beaxy Token (BXY), DragonChain (DRGN), Tron (TRX), BitTorrent (BTT), Terra USD (UST), Luna (LUNA), Mirror Protocol (MIR), Mango (MNGO), Ducat (DUCAT), Locke (LOCKE), EthereumMax (EMAX), Hydro (HYDRO), BitConnect (BCC), Meta 1 Coin (META1), Filecoin (FIL), BNB (BNB), Binance USD (BUSD), Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), Polygon (MATIC), Cosmos (ATOM), The Sandbox (SAND), Decentraland (MANA), Axie Infinity (AXS), COTI (COTI), Paragon (PRG) and AirToken (AIR).
In addition, the SEC determined that these 13 Mirror Protocol mAssets are marketable securities:
Mirrored Apple Inc (mAAPL), Mirrored Amazon.com, Inc (mAMZN), Mirrored Alibaba Group Holding Limited (mBABA), Mirrored Alphabet Inc (mGOOGL ), Mirrored Microsoft Corporation (mMSFT), Mirrored Netflix, Inc (mNFLX), Mirrored Tesla, Inc. (mTSLA), Mirrored Twitter Inc. (mTWTR), Mirrored iShares Gold Trust (mIAU), Mirrored Invesco QQQ Trust (mQQQ) , Mirrored iShares Silver Trust (mSLV), Mirrored United States Oil Fund, LP (mUSO), Mirrored ProShares VIX Short-Term Future ETF (mVIXY).
Why is this a problem?
Why is it a problem for a cryptocurrency to be categorized as a security or security? The big risk is that centralized cryptocurrency exchanges will be forced to remove it from their platform so that they are not accused by the SEC of selling unregulated securities. Such a development for a cryptocurrency would be a problem, as it would undoubtedly affect its capitalization and therefore its price.
Of course, if exchanges continue to have cryptocurrencies on their platform that are considered securities by the SEC and the SEC itself takes legal action against them, they would have to prove in court that each individual cryptocurrency is a security. And we have seen how much time and money it takes to litigate such cases, if we take into account from the XRP case that has been in the courtrooms for years. Therefore, such an undertaking by the SEC will not be anything but easy.
Moreover, we must not forget that the SEC has jurisdiction only within the US, so even a cryptocurrency being judicially confirmed to be a movable asset or even an exchange or exchanges being banned from a cryptocurrency or some cryptocurrencies does not necessarily mean that it will be destroyed or disappear. Right now the bulk of the cryptocurrency market comes from Asia and not the US.
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