Microstrategy CEO classes Ethereum as a ‘security’

Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor has drummed support for Ethereum amidst the recent market turmoil, branding the digital asset as a good form of security. Saylor said this at a recent interview where he was asked to give his opinion on Ethereum and the leading digital asset, Bitcoin. According to the widespread claim, a few investors and traders have noted that Ethereum and Bitcoin are commodities. Some employees of the SEC and CFTC had branded the assets as commodities over the last few weeks.

Microstrategy CEO gives reason for his classification

In his statement, the Microstrategy CEO mentioned that one of the few reasons he believes that Ethereum is a security is because it was introduced into the market via an ICO. Aside from that, the token has a pre-mine, a team oversees its activities, and a hard fork was conducted. The Microstrategy CEO also noted that over the years, there had been other hard forks that have been conducted.

He also noted that if it were a commodity, there would be no company issuing the token, which means nobody is making all the big decisions. He noted that most of the tokens in the market had done multiple hard forks over the year, which has made them change protocols. This means that there is an entity that is controlling the affairs of the networks.

Former SEC director says BTC and ETH are not securities

In 2018, during a conference, the then finance director at SEC told the media that the agency was planning to use something called the ‘Howey Test’ to categorize tokens that are securities from the ones that are commodities. At the time, the said director, William Hinman, noted that they would start from Bitcoin and Ethereum while predicting that none of them could fall into the securities category. At the time, Hinman mentioned that Bitcoin doesn’t have a third party working on the digital asset since its inception.

He noted that Bitcoin had been decentralized since the beginning, which is one of the reasons why the network has not stopped functioning. The director also said that aside from the fundraiser conducted when Ethereum was created, every other function it possesses now points to the asset being decentralized. He also noted that the current ways to purchase Ethereum do not depict an asset that is a security.

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