Crypto Coins Surge as SEC Spares Ether From Securities Rules
- Statement eases concerns that regulators would crack down
- Digital currency rises as much as 12 percent on announcement
Ether investors got a reprieve Thursday when a top U.S. regulator said transactions involving the token aren’t subject to federal securities rules, ending months of speculation that had weighed on the second-most valuable digital currency. Ether and other coins surged on the news.
"Putting aside the fundraising that accompanied the creation of Ether, based on my understanding of the present state of Ether, the Ethereum network and its decentralized structure, current offers and sales of Ether are not securities transactions," William Hinman, who heads the Securities and Exchange Commission’s division of corporation finance, said in remarks prepared for a Yahoo Finance conference in San Francisco. "And, as with Bitcoin, applying the disclosure regime of the federal securities laws to current transactions in Ether would seem to add little value."