PANews reported on May 7 that according to CoinDesk, the latest SEC internal documents disclosed by Coinbase show that during the prosecution of the crypto exchange KuCoin in 2023, the New York Attorney General's Office asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to formally identify Ethereum as a security. Shamiso Maswoswe, director of the New York State Investor Protection Bureau, explicitly requested the SEC to submit a friend of the court brief in an email to support this position, saying that "although this is not a decisive factor in the case, the court's determination that ETH is a security will be more conducive to investor protection." The SEC ultimately did not respond to the New York prosecutor's request and maintained an ambiguous position on the attributes of ETH. The documents show that the SEC tended to identify ETH as a commodity in the early days, but its attitude wavered after Ethereum switched to the PoS mechanism. It is reported that New York State has a special financial regulatory system, and its Department of Financial Services has jurisdiction over both securities and commodity transactions.
With the Trump administration appointing crypto-friendly Paul Atkins to head the SEC, the tension in US crypto regulation has eased. The SEC has recently issued statements to clarify that some digital assets do not fall into the category of securities. However, this exposed document once again highlights the fundamental differences between US federal and state regulators on the qualitative issue of cryptocurrencies.
