The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States is apparently investigating a young segment of the digital asset business for possibly illegal crypto-asset offers.
According to a recent Bloomberg storey, the SEC’s investigation will concentrate on whether or not non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are being utilised in the same manner as conventional securities to generate capital.
The agency’s objective is to assess whether NFTs qualify as securities and hence fall under the same federal rules as stocks and other conventional commodities.
According to Bloomberg, the SEC’s investigation will focus on fractional NFTs, or NFTs that have been broken into smaller parts that may be exchanged, to see if they break any of the regulatory body’s laws.
This is not the first time the SEC has been on the lookout for criminal cryptocurrency activity. In 2020, the government filed a high-profile lawsuit against San Francisco-based payments startup Ripple Labs for allegedly marketing the crypto currency XRP as an unregistered securities.
Last year, the SEC’s lobbying and legal threats forced Coinbase, the largest US cryptocurrency trading platform, to abandon plans to provide a high-yield stablecoin savings account.
Additionally, the regulatory body allegedly negotiated an arrangement last month with prominent cryptocurrency lending business BlockFi. The crypto finance startup agreed to pay the SEC $100 million to address allegations that it was marketing items that acted as securities and were therefore regulated. The SEC has not yet issued an official declaration regarding the NFT market probe.
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