Crypto exchange FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried says his firm is not supporting certain digital assets in the US to avoid regulatory issues.
Bankman-Fried says that pending the establishment of legal frameworks that will define and categorize crypto assets, his firm will attempt to determine which coins can be deemed as a security.
“Our legal team will do an analysis of the asset according to the Howey Test and other relevant case law and guidance. If that analysis finds it to be a security, we will treat it as such.”
Bankman-Fried says that the platform will not support tokens with the characteristics of a security and those considered by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or an appropriate court as one.
“Ideally, we’d end up in a place as an industry where being a security is not a bad thing: where there are clear processes for registering digital asset securities which protect customers while allowing for innovation. We remain excited to work constructively with regulators to develop and act within a regulatory framework for tokens that are securities.”
Bankman-Fried issues the statement as his company faces allegations of offering unregistered securities in Texas. Amid FTX’s probe by the Texas State Securities Board’s enforcement division, the executive is pushing the idea of regulating the crypto space.
“At a high level:
a) we need regulatory oversight and customer protection
b) we need to ensure an open, free economy, where peer-to-peer transfers, code, validators, etc. are presumptively free
c) we should establish regulation–and until then standards–to ensure (a/b)”
Featured Image: Shutterstock/Denis Starostin