TL; DR
Full story
Our friend Greg once got fired from GameStop for selling early copies of ‘Not charted 4‘ to his group of friends, a few days before the official release.
His response went something like this:
“It sucked that I got caught, but I get it. Selling pre-release games to my friends wasn’t exactly fair to the wider gaming community.”
There is a parallel with Greg’s actions and the way US courts view cryptocurrency sales.
If it’s sold publicly, we’re all good (most cryptocurrencies.) are not seen unregistered securities [think: unregistered stocks] in this case).
If it is sold privately – we’re going to have a problem.
That is what was found in the case of SEC vs. Ripple (XRP).
XRP tokens are sold publicly, allowing holders to transact on the XRP network – totally fine. XRP tokens are sold privately to major industry companies as a way to invest in Ripple (the company) – big no-no.
And that finding set a legal precedent that is now leading to further legal victories for crypto industry players.
Victories like Coinbase’s last week, when the U.S. Court of Appeals issued a sweeping ruling stating:
The secondary sale of cryptocurrency (also known as Coinbase selling cryptocurrency through its exchange platform) does not constitute a sale of unregistered securities.
(That is, Coinbase is not “selling pre-release versions of Uncharted 4” – if you know what we mean).
In itself this was a small victory. But it’s one that should help Coinbase as they take on the SEC later this year.
Nice!