Okay, crypto fam, hold the phone! The U.S. House of Representatives has dropped a draft discussion paper on market structure, and it’s got some seriously good news for us. According to Forbes’ Eleanor Terrett, page 49 of this thing is basically saying that buying and selling digital assets on the secondary market – meaning not directly from the creators – won’t automatically be considered a securities transaction.
Photo source:www.binance.com
Let’s break this down. For too long, the SEC has been trying to shoehorn everything crypto into existing securities laws, creating a chilling effect on innovation. This draft correctly points out that simply buying a token doesn’t mean you own a piece of the company.
Essentially, if you’re trading Ethereum on Coinbase, or Bitcoin on Binance, and it doesn’t give you a stake in the company that created those coins, it’s not a security. It’s a commodity! Finally, some common sense! This could unlock massive growth and investment in the space.
Here’s a little deeper dive into why this matters:
Securities law is complex and expensive to comply with. Applying it needlessly to digital asset trading stifles innovation. The current uncertainty has driven tons of crypto activity overseas.
Think about it – if every NFT sale were a security offering, it would create a bureaucratic nightmare! This exemption for secondary market sales drastically reduces that risk.
The key here is ownership. If the sale doesn’t transfer any ownership rights to the business’s assets or profits, it’s less likely to be deemed a security.
This isn’t a done deal yet, folks. It’s a draft, and plenty can change. But it’s a damn good sign that lawmakers are actually starting to get crypto. Let’s keep the pressure on and make sure this becomes reality!
