Matt Levine, Columnist

The SEC Will Leave Good ICOs Alone

Also research tracking, machine learning and Michael Milken.

June 15, 2018 at 2:34 PM UTC

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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Ether is not a security.

William Hinman, the Director of the Division of Corporation Finance at the Securities and Exchange Commission, gave a smart and nuanced speech yesterday declaring that Ether—the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network—is not a security and so is not subject to the requirements of U.S. securities law. People had wondered. I think there is a reasonable view that, when it was first launched—when it was closely held and then sold to investors to raise funds to develop the Ethereum network—it might have been a security, but it’s not now, and, you know, water under the bridge, whatever. That is not a particularly solid legal analysis or anything, but it does seem more practical than going back and bothering Ethereum about what it did before the SEC was paying attention. Also it is literally what Hinman said (emphasis added):