SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce Continues to Support Technology
In three recent speeches, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce continued to proclaim her support for technological innovation and freedom in capital markets. On September 12, 2018, Ms. Peirce gave a speech at the Cato Institute’s FinTech Unbound Conference which she titled Motherhood and Humble Pie, on September 24 she spoke at the University of Michigan Law School titling her speech Wolves and Wolverines, and then on October 2 she spoke at the Financial Planning Association 2018 Major Firms Symposium, calling that speech Pickups and Put Downs. Besides the great titles, I applaud her content and perspective.
Motherhood and Humble Pie
A prevailing theme in all three speeches centered on her dissent to the SEC’s rejection of an exchange traded product or mutual fund. As an aside, since I wrote this blog on the SEC’s published concerns related to a cryptocurrency-related exchange traded product or mutual fund, HERE, the SEC has continued to deny several more applications for such a product.
Securities Token Or Not? A Case Study – Part II
This is the second part in my three-part series laying out fact patterns and discussing whether a specific digital asset is a security, a utility, currency, commodity or some other digital asset. Although the first and easy answer is that if a digital asset is being issued today, it is most assuredly a security upon issuance that needs to comply with the federal securities laws, the answer is not always that straightforward for digital assets that have been in the marketplace for a period of time, such as Bitcoin and Ether, or for new digital assets that are carefully being constructed to fall outside the purview of a securitized token.
In the first part of this series, we examined the Oldie Token and, under the fact pattern presented, was able to determine that the Oldie Token was not a security. Part 1 can be read HERE. In this part we will examine the Functional Token, which has not
