Since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Binance and Coinbase, the amount of cryptocurrencies deemed unregistered securities by U.S. regulators has now exceeded $120 billion.
In the SEC’s view, Coinbase earned billions of dollars in revenue but lacked the disclosures and protections required to register.
The SEC mentioned more than a dozen tokens in the above two lawsuits, claiming that these tokens are securities that should be registered with the SEC.
In the lawsuit against Binance, Binance’s token BNB, with a market value of $44 billion, and stablecoin BUSD, Cardano’s ADA, Solana’s SOL, Polygon’s MATIC, Filecoin’s FIL, and Algorand’s ALGO were all classified as securities. In the lawsuit against Coinbase, NEAR tokens and Dfinity’s ICP tokens were considered securities.
Together with other tokens such as XRP mentioned earlier, the SEC has now classified more than $120 billion worth of tokens as unregistered securities. In comparison, according to Coingecko data, the global cryptocurrency market value is about $1.1 trillion, and its market value once exceeded $3 trillion during the boom period of the new crown epidemic.
SEC Chairman Gensler has repeatedly warned that cryptocurrency exchanges and the tokens they trade may violate U.S. federal law, pointing out that most cryptocurrencies qualify as securities and urging platforms to complete registration as soon as possible.
After the collapse of FTX in November last year caused a storm in the cryptocurrency circle, Gensler's attitude became tougher.
After the SEC filed the lawsuit, Filecoin fell by about 10%, while BNB fell by about 9%, and other named tokens also suffered declines. In addition, unnamed cryptocurrencies were dragged down, with Bitcoin falling by about 6%.
As the two giants are frequently hit by regulators, players in the cryptocurrency market may once again usher in a major reshuffle.
