The SEC has officially wrapped up its investigations into 'Ethereum 2.0.' Consensys received a letter from the agency a few hours back indicating that the agency does not intend to recommend an enforcement action against the firm.
Announcing the same, Laura Brookover, Senior Counsel and Head of Litigation and Investigations at Consensys, said,
“The SEC sent us a closing letter in the Ethereum 2.0 investigation today. Things have changed remarkably fast since we filed our lawsuit against the SEC in late April, culminating in today’s development. After more than a year, the Ethereum investigation is finally over with no charges against anyone.”
Consensys sued the SEC in April 2024 alleging that the regulator was investigating whether post-merge Ethereum might be a security.
The firm sought a court order that would halt the SEC’s investigation. Consensys asserted that ETH was a commodity. In retrospect, it argued that the asset did not fall under the SEC’s jurisdiction or regulatory ambit.
A couple of weeks back, Consensys sent a letter asking the SEC to affirm that the ETH ETF approvals in May, which were based on the assumption that Ether is a commodity, meant the agency would wind up its Ethereum 2.0 investigation.
The security-not-a-security debate has plagued US investors for more than a handful of years now. In fact, this was the basis against which the agency sued Ripple Labs and several other centralized exchanges like Coinbase and Binance for dealing with unregistered securities.
In fact, a couple of weeks back, it also served Uniswap with a Wells Notice indicating that it intends to pursue enforcement action against it. On the back of the latest decision, Hayden Adams, the creator of Uniswap exclaimed,
“Okay cool, Uniswap next please. Not too late to make the right decision here!”
Meanwhile, in its official blog post, the Consensys team asserted,
“No company or individual should find itself in our position, having to resort to costly litigation to obtain clarity about what is and is not lawful.”
On the back of the latest development, ETH crawled up above $3.5k and flashed a 4% uptick on the daily.
