Jake Chervinsky, the CLO at Variant Fund, said that there is no reason to believe that SOL is not security.
After the recent filing by the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) about some Binance crypto offerings being securities, crypto commentators have started weighing in on the issue, suggesting the SEC still likely views Solana (SOL) as security.
The SEC in the new filing seeks to amend its complaint regarding “Third Party Crypto Asset Securities”, and among the crypto mentioned was Solana. This has raised various views about what it could mean and how the decision might affect SOL.
Commenting on the case was Jake Chervinsky, the Chief Legal Officer (CLO) at Variant Fund, he said in his statement that there is no reason to believe that SOL is not security. He called the move by the SEC a litigation tactic and not a change in policy. He noted that the financial watchdog still refers to the same tokens as securities in other exchange lawsuits. He said:
“There is no reason to think SEC has decided SOL is a non-security. That they don’t want to do discovery on a dozen tokens in the Binance case appears to be a litigation tactic, not a change in policy. Note the SEC still calls these tokens securities in the other exchange cases.”
Similarly, Justin Slaughter, a senior adviser at SEC, tagged the action by people as “overreading”. He explained that the filing by the SEC does not mean they will no longer take their position that Solana as well as other tokens are not securities. However, the only difference is that it won’t be proving the tokens listed in its amended complaint against Binance as securities.
Miles Jennings, head of decentralization at a16z Crypto regarded the action as political, he said the judge in charge of the Binance case has set a very difficult standard for proving if a token is a security under the Howey test. He noted that the SEC, seeing the difficulty, opted to forgo the legal hurdle of proving these tokens are securities in that case. However, the judge in the Coinbase lawsuit, Katherine Polk Failla, seems more likely to agree with the SEC’s position. So the regulator is not making the same request in that case.
The 16z Crypto head of decentralization added that if a thorough investigation had been conducted and found evidence that secondary purchasers were reasonably relying on the management team’s efforts, this evidence should have been included in the original complaint. He went further, saying that there might be political moves behind the way the SEC is handling the case. He said:
” Obviously, I’m speculating about their political motive, but that speculation is informed by information I’m privy to about the SEC’s behavior behind closed doors.”
Implications for a Potential Solana ETF
However, Cozy ⓣhe Caller, a crypto influencer with over 140 thousand followers on X, sees the news as a positive one for Solana. According to him, the amended report is a good one for SOL ETF to go live; he suggested Blackrock could file for it.
“SEC Not trying to prove Solana is a security is very nice. Now we can finally have a Solana ETF go live. The concern with the Solana ETF was exactly this, Solana could be considered a security. So basically Solana ETF live soon. Watch Blackrock also file for it,” he said.
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