Matt Levine, Columnist

Terra Is Usually a Security

Also electricity CfDs, AA+ rated agencies, Martin Shkreli’s path to profitability, Binance TBTJ and cold-calling VC interns.

August 3, 2023 at 5:51 PM UTC

By Matt Levine

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

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Programming note: Money Stuff will be off tomorrow, back on Monday.

We have talked a few times recently about the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against Ripple Labs Inc. Ripple is a company that is building a blockchain ecosystem; it created and sold a bunch of crypto tokens called XRP to fund that development. The SEC argued that this was a securities offering — Ripple sold quasi-stock in its project, for money, to build that project — while Ripple argued that it wasn’t. Last month, a federal judge in New York issued a split decision: