Solana, others caught in SEC crackdown ‘don’t deserve it,’ Buterin says

Solana (SOL) was deemed a security in the SEC suits against both Binance and Coinbase. And so were cardano (ADA), Polygon’s token MATIC, filecoin (FIL), the Sandbox’s SAND, and Axie Infinity (AXS).

Ether went untouched in the SEC’s crackdown, and even for casual observers, this wasn’t surprising.

When SEC Chair Gary Gensler testified before the House Financial Services Committee in April, he refused to give a definite answer on whether ether was a security or a commodity.

And a little over a month before Gensler’s congressional appearance, CFTC Chair Rostin Behnam was a bit clearer on where ether stood, since his agency has already allowed the trading of ether futures products.

“I’ve made the argument that ether is a commodity,” Behnam told senators in March. “It’s been listed on CFTC exchanges for quite some time.”

He continued, “We would not have allowed the product – in this case the ether futures product – to be listed on a CFTC exchange if we did not feel strongly that it was a commodity asset because we have litigation risk.”

The first regulator to claim ether is a security was New York Attorney General Letitia James, though her view hasn’t gained much traction.

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