SEC's William Hinman, head of Division of Corporate Finance who oversees cryptocurrencies, says Bitcoin and Ether are not securities but many ICOs are
Not your lawyer, not legal advice. Daniel Palmer / CoinDesk : SEC Has Removed ‘Stumbling Block’ for Ether Futures, Says Cboe President Bloomberg : Crypto Coins Surge as SEC Spares Ether From Securities Rules Louise Matsakis / Wired : Rest Easy, Cryptocurrency Fans: Ether and Bitcoin Aren't Securities Jasmine Solana / Coingeek : Decentralized cryptocurrencies are not securities, SEC exec says Jeff John Roberts / Fortune : The SEC's Big Cryptocurrency Speech: 5 Things to Know Neer Varshney / The Next Web : SEC: Ethereum is too ‘decentralized’ to be considered a security Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE : SEC official: Traditional cryptocurrencies aren't subject to securities law but most ICOs are Charlie Osborne / ZDNet : SEC director says Ethereum does not fall under securities regulation Mike Orcutt / MIT Technology Review : The SEC says Ethereum's cryptocurrency isn't a security Shannon Liao / The Verge : The SEC says Ethereum tokens are not securities PYMNTS.com : Bitcoin Daily: Ether Price Soars, William Shatner Stands Up For Bitcoin Jonathan Shieber / TechCrunch : SEC says Ether isn't a security, but tokens based on Ether can be Fred Wilson / AVC : Ether Is Not A Security — Yesterday, a top official from the SEC … Jack Morse / Mashable : In huge win for cryptocurrency, SEC says bitcoin and ether aren't securities Kate Rooney / CNBC : Cryptocurrency ether soars 9% after SEC official says it's not a security Matthew De Silva / ETHNews : SEC Director Believes Ether (Today) Is Not A Security Lucas Mearian / ITworld.com : SEC official says Ethereum is not a security, freeing it from oversight Yahoo Finance / Yahoo! Finance : Yahoo Finance Presents All Markets Summit: Crypto Marrian Zhou / CNET : Ether doesn't fall under SEC rules Matthew Hrones / Bitcoinist.com : SEC: Bitcoin and Ether Are Not Securities Colin Harper / Bitcoin Magazine : SEC Director of Corporate Finance: Ether Is Not a Security Anna Irrera / Reuters : U.S. SEC official says ether not a security, price surges Nikhilesh De / CoinDesk : SEC Official: Ether Is Not A Security Tweets: @asglidden : The greatest downside of today's SEC statement on Ethereum is that it will lock ETH in as a dominant platform because better protocols won't be able to get the vaunted “decentralized” status before the regulators notice them. This is the future we were supposed to be fighting. Nick Grossman / @nickgrossman : This is a concern, and a reason why the SEC must now define a path for the development of new tokens, which may start out sponsor-controlled but become decentralized over time https://twitter.com/... Luke Martin / @venturecoinist : SEC: $BTC and $ETH are not securities but some cryptocurrencies may be. Most notable sentence in this article is Hinman noting decentralization's importance in determining security status...would not address $XRP full article: https://www.cnbc.com/... pic.twitter.com/ummyHp93XV
Context & Ripple Effects
Hinman's remarks land one week after the SEC's top brass declared it would not bend securities laws to accommodate crypto fundraising, reaffirming that ICO tokens are securities — see that refusal to bend securities laws for crypto. What changes today is the other half of the picture: the official who runs the division policing token sales draws a line between the two largest networks and the ICO market built on top of them.
The distinction matters immediately because Cboe says the SEC has removed what it called a stumbling block for ether futures, and because the 'decentralized enough' framing Hinman introduces becomes the standard every later fight turns on — including Gensler's later refusal to state whether ether is a security under congressional questioning.
First-order effects
- ICO issuers remain squarely in enforcement reach — Hinman says many token sales are securities offerings — while Bitcoin and Ether holders, developers, and the exchanges listing them get explicit cover from the division that oversees crypto.
- Cboe can move forward with ether futures, since the overhang of ether being ruled a security is lifted by the division chief's public statement.
Second-order effects
- Exchanges and futures venues gain a two-tier listing calculus: assets deemed sufficiently decentralized trade as commodities, while ICO-era tokens carry registration risk, pushing trading volume and listings toward BTC and ETH.
- Token projects that funded themselves via ICOs face pressure to argue their own decentralization or restructure, since the safe harbor Hinman describes is network-specific, not a blanket exemption.
Third-order effects
- The 'sufficiently decentralized' test hardens into the industry's central legal fault line: five years later the SEC chair still won't confirm ether's status, Coinbase litigates over whether the agency can police its listings at all, and the SEC eventually carves out stablecoins by the same case-by-case logic seen in its stablecoin non-security determination.
- If the pattern holds, US crypto regulation settles into asset-by-asset adjudication rather than formal rulemaking — the outcome Coinbase sought when it petitioned for digital asset rules and was rebuffed.
The trend: US crypto oversight is consolidating around a decentralization-based commodity/security divide that each successive SEC leadership re-litigates rather than codifies.