The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped its case against Ether. However, in another crypto case, the regulator still demands billions in penalties from Ripple.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is dropping its investigation into whether Ether is a security, Ethereum developer Consensys disclosed on June 19. The investigation focused on whether Ethereums 2014 initial coin offering constituted an unregistered securities offering. Consensys said the SECs decision came after it sent a letter to the agency on June 7 asking if it would end its investigation into Ether (ETH), as the regulator approved exchange-traded funds in May premised on ETH being a commodity.
Crypto exchange Kraken has recovered missing funds from CertiK following a high-profile bug bounty exploit fiasco. Kraken confirmed the return of digital assets worth nearly $3 million on June 20, putting an end to the Kraken-CertiK saga. The exchange claimed that a security researcher maliciously withdrew from its treasury after discovering and sharing an existing bug. Shortly after, blockchain security firm CertiK publicly identified itself as the security researcher, saying it had informed Kraken of an exploit that allowed it to remove millions of dollars from the exchanges accounts. CertiK also claimed to have been threatened by the exchanges team.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rejected Ripples request for a lower penalty amid its legal battle with the regulatory agency, arguing that Ripples proposed $10 million penalty is insufficient compared to the $876.3 million sought. Ripple had cited the SECs settlement with Terraform Labs as a benchmark, but the agency believes the circumstances are not comparable, as Terraform agreed to additional measures like leadership changes and investor repayments. The SECs proposed penalties for Ripple total nearly $2 billion, which includes $198.2 million in prejudgment interest, $876.3 million in civil penalty and another $876.3 million in disgorgement.
