Michael Saylor has said that XRP is a security, noting that the cryptocurrency falls under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The self-declared Bitcoin HODLer expressed strong views when speaking on the PBD podcast earlier on Tuesday.
“XRP is an unregistered security,” Saylor said when asked about his thoughts on the embattled cryptocurrency. “It’s pretty obvious. There’s a company. The company owns a bunch of it, they sell it to the general public, but they never took the company public, there is no disclosures. So the SEC position is you’re selling an unregistered security,” he added.
Saylor went on to argue that except Bitcoin, which did not have a known creator, all other cryptocurrencies fulfilled the threshold of an investment contract. According to the US Securities Act, an investment contract is described as an investment of money in a common enterprise relying upon the efforts of others and expecting a profit.
Apart from bitcoin, “all these other tokens are unregistered securities. They are all just equity tokens issued by a company in order to get around going public and they are committing securities fraud,” Saylor added.
The former CEO of business intelligence company MicroStrategy went on to charge at Ethereum, noting that it was equally a security, despite earlier statements by the CFTC that it was a commodity.
“You know Ethereum has got $20 billion of Ether token locked up in the staking contract right now and there is a couple of people who may or may not give it back to you every. Now isn’t that the definition of an investment contract?” he asked.
According to him, one did not need to look far to conclude. “If the person can make a decision, it’s not a commodity anymore,” he said, insisting that the fact that XRP, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies had companies and engineers to write to code, qualified them as securities.
He went on to state that the best thing for the world would be if the SEC would “pretty much shut down all of those token’s down since they were all unethical. Saylor’s comments come even as the crypto community eagerly awaits the decision in the SEC vs Ripple lawsuit, which could have far-reaching ramifications on the industry, according to experts.
In August, Saylor came under fire after arguing that all legitimate talent works on top of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Pro-Ripple lawyer John Deaton found it “absurd” for Saylor to make the comments which implied almost everything other than BTC is a security.