US Senator Lummis: Seems ‘Bitcoin is the only thing that will qualify as a commodity’
On Wednesday (December 7, 2022), US Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) said during an interview that Ethereum ($ETH) may be called a security by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”).
According to a press release issued on June 7, 2022, US Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), a member of the Senate Banking Committee, introduced the Responsible Financial Innovation Act, landmark bipartisan legislation that would create a complete regulatory framework for digital assets that encourages responsible financial innovation, flexibility, transparency and robust consumer protection while integrating digital assets into existing law.”
According to a report from CoinDesk, yesterday (December 7, 2022), during an interview on CoinDesk TV, Lummis – who plans to reintroduce his bipartisan legislation next year – said that “it’s starting to look more like bitcoin is the only thing that will qualify as a commodity,” and that Ethereum can be “a security because of the way [it] moved from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake,” with “the inability to [unstake tokens] right now”, making it “susceptible to being [considered] a security.”
On December 6, 2022, while being interviewed by entrepreneur Patrick Bet-David (“PBD”) for episode 212 of the PBD Podcast, Michael Saylor, co-founder and executive chairman of business intelligence software company MicroStrategy Inc. (Nasdaq: MSTR), was asked about what he thinks about Ripple (or rather XRP).
Saylor, who seems confused about the difference between Ripple, which is a FinTech firm specializing in cross-border payment solutions, and XRP, which is a digital asset that is the native symbol of the XRP Ledger (XRPL), replied:
“Ripple is an unregistered security… It’s a company. The company owns a bunch of it. They sell it to the public, but they never took the company public. There are no revelations, right? So the SEC’s position is “you are selling an unregistered security”. It’s a crypto token, right?
Just like Ethereum is an unregistered security. It is controlled by a few people in the Ethereum Foundation and Consensys… Just like FTT. Just like Solana. They are all unregistered securities…”
PBD then asked Saylor if all altcoins are unregistered securities, why is the SEC going after $XRP and not $ETH.
Saylor replied:
“I think the best thing for the world would be if the SEC pretty much shut everything down. It’s all unethical, isn’t it? I believe the Bitcoin position would be Bitcoin is an ethical commodity. All these other altcoins are unregistered securities. They are all just equity tokens issued by a company to get around on exchanges and they commit securities fraud, Ethereum included, of course. Especially Ethereum.
“You know, Ethereum has $20 billion of ETH tokens locked up in the staking contract right now, and there are a couple of people who may or may not ever give it back to you. Now, isn’t that the definition of an investment contract? If a bank took $20 billion of your assets, froze the window and said, ‘You can never get your money back, it could be in the year 2024, we’re not sure, we’ll just keep it, we can actually give you interest on it, we can take it all, we can cut it.
“That’s the definition of a security, right? It is an investment of money in a joint enterprise, depending on the efforts of others and the expectation of profit. The whole point is that if you want crypto-assets to be a commodity, you can’t rely on four, engineers, a company, a CEO. If a person can make a decision, it is not a commodity.“
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