Bitcoin (BTC) firebrand Michael Saylor says the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would be right to shut down essentially all altcoins which he says are being sold as unregistered securities.
In a new interview on the PDB Podcast, the former chief executive of MicroStrategy says that many altcoins, especially leading smart contract platform Ethereum (ETH), are committing securities fraud.
Other altcoins he names include ETH rival Solana (SOL), and XRP, the crypto asset used to operate Ripple Labs’ payments platform.
“Ripple is an unregistered security. It’s pretty obvious. It’s a company, the company owns a bunch of [XRP], they sell it to the general public, but they never took the company public and there’s no disclosures.
So the SEC’s position is ‘you’re selling an unregistered security,’ it’s a crypto token. Just like [how] Ethereum is an unregistered security. It’s controlled by a few people and the Ethereum Foundation and Consensys. Just like FTT [FTX Token], just like Solana, they’re all unregistered securities.”
In December 2020, the SEC sued Ripple Labs under allegations the company was selling XRP as an unregistered security. The case is still ongoing. but Saylor says that the SEC should shut down all of them rather than just target XRP.
According to Saylor, Bitcoin is the only ethical crypto asset on the market as all other digital assets fit the definition of a security, particularly ETH.
“I think the best thing for the world would be if the SEC pretty much shut down all of it. It’s all unethical. The Bitcoin position would be [that] Bitcoin is an ethical commodity. All of these other altcoins are unregistered securities. They’re all just equity tokens issued by a company in order to get around going public, and they’re committing securities fraud. All of them….especially Ethereum.
Ethereum’s got $20 billion of ETH token locked up in a staking contract and there’s a couple of people that may or may not give it back to you ever. Isn’t that the definition of an investment contract? If a bank took $20 billion of your assets, froze the window, and said ‘you can’t have your money back ever, maybe in the year 2024, we’re not sure, we’re just gonna keep it, we may actually give you interest on it, we may take it all, we may slash it…that’s the definition of a security…
If you want a crypto asset to be a commodity, you can’t rely on four engineers, a company, and a CEO.”
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Featured Image: Shutterstock/Philipp Tur
