On Thursday, the United States House of Representatives issued two laws on cryptocurrencies. One of them defines what kind of cryptocurrencies qualify as securities, the other presupposes the transfer of control over the exchanges to the hands of the regulatory organs of the country.
The Law on the Transparency of Securities from the representative Tom Emmer establishes a new difference in the law on securities between investment contract and an “asset, sold in accordance with the investment contract, material or non-material (including asset in digital form).”
The new draft law, as it seems, is a direct answer to the debates on the structure of a simple agreement for future tokens, in the framework of which were included such currencies like EOS, and which caused a lot of controversy, particularly in the disputes on Telegram.
In case of acceptance, the law will restrict the Securities and exchange commission (SEC) from tracing digital assets on the premise of the initial contracts, by which they were sold.
The proposed law will bring the cryptocurrency exchanges under the jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which will save the exchanges from the confusion in licensing in the dependence of the legislation in different states.
And although the new law, it would seem, would largely treat cryptocurrency under the same rules as the securities, it provides a place for SEC activity in connection with the “offering of securities or transactions associated with the sale of digital goods”.
