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Our buddy Greg once got fired from GameStop for selling early copies of ‘Uncharted 4’ to his friend group, a few days before its official release.
His reaction went something like:
‘It sucked that I got caught — but I get it. Selling pre-release games to my buddies wasn’t exactly fair to the broader gaming community.’
There’s a parallel with Greg’s actions, and the way US courts look at the sale of cryptocurrency.
If its being sold publicly — we’re all good (most cryptocurrencies aren’t seen unregistered securities [think: unregistered stocks] in this case).
If its being sold privately — we’re going to have a problem.
That’s what was found in the SEC vs. Ripple (XRP) case.
XRP tokens being sold publicly, so holders can transact on the XRP network — totally fine. XRP tokens being sold privately to industry big-dogs, as a way to invest in Ripple (the company) — big no-no.
And that finding set a legal precedent, which is now leading to further legal wins for crypto industry players.
Wins like the one seen by Coinbase this past week, when the US Court of Appeals issued a comprehensive ruling that said:
The secondary sales of crypto (aka Coinbase selling crypto via its exchange platform) does not constitute the sale of unregistered securities.
(I.e. Coinbase isn’t “selling pre-release versions of Uncharted 4” — if you catch our drift).
On its own, this was a small win. But it’s one that should help Coinbase when they go head to head with the SEC later this year.
Nice!
