The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States may not have had a strong case to prove that Ether is a security, as they closed their investigation on June 19. Consensys lawyer Laura Brookover stated that the SEC will no longer claim that Ether is a security, attributing this change to the recent approval of Ether exchange-traded fund (ETF) rule changes which classified Ether as a commodity.
Although Consensys mentioned that the SEC’s approval of spot Ether ETFs indicated that Ether is now classified as a commodity, the Commission itself has not confirmed this publicly. An SEC spokesperson declined to comment on the matter of any ongoing investigation.
Despite the approval of a spot Ether ETF, Carol Goforth, a professor specializing in securities regulation, argues that this does not necessarily mean Ether is a commodity. She pointed out that there are already ETFs backed by commodities.
In other news, Iran has launched a pilot for its national digital currency (CBDC) targeting domestic micropayments. The digital rial will be available to bank customers and tourists on the island of Kish, a popular tourist destination in the Persian Gulf.
Uphold, a cryptocurrency exchange, will be delisting six stablecoins from its European market to comply with the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) of the European Union. Users holding these stablecoins must convert them to another cryptocurrency by June 28, after which they will be automatically converted into USD Coin.
Italy is also increasing surveillance of the crypto markets to comply with the MiCA regulatory framework, aiming to prevent insider trading and market manipulation. The new regulations include fines ranging from 5,000 to 5 million euros depending on the severity of the violations. Blockchain firms and DeFi protocols are facing tough decisions on how to comply with the framework’s regulations.