#SECCryptoRoundtable
In the wake of the 2008 Financial Crisis, a person or group going by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto released a white paper describing a new peer-to-peer electronic cash system called Bitcoin that helped form an entirely new digitally native asset class. Seventeen years later, market participants, lawyers, academics, policymakers, and regulators are still grappling with critical questions related to the status of these novel crypto assets under the federal securities laws. This disagreement is most pronounced when it comes to application of the investment contract test established by the Supreme Court in its 1946 opinion in SEC v. W.J. Howey Co. (known as the “Howey test”) to crypto assets.
In the wake of the 2008 Financial Crisis, a person or group going by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto released a white paper describing a new peer-to-peer electronic cash system called Bitcoin that helped form an entirely new digitally native asset class. Seventeen years later, market participants, lawyers, academics, policymakers, and regulators are still grappling with critical questions related to the status of these novel crypto assets under the federal securities laws. This disagreement is most pronounced when it comes to application of the investment contract test established by the Supreme Court in its 1946 opinion in SEC v. W.J. Howey Co. (known as the “Howey test”) to crypto assets.