FTX US Bans Tokens That May Be Defined As Securities From Listing: Details

Bloomberg has reported that the crypto trading behemoth FTX, its US branch, intends to start analyze tokens as to whether they may be qualified as securities or not. The founder and CEO of FTX, billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried spread the word about that in a blog post published on October 20.

FTX US will do its own analysis of what kinds of crypto tokens count as a security when making listing decisions https://t.co/QFJbXRnZfX

— Bloomberg Crypto (@crypto) October 20, 2022

FTX US to define potential securities among crypto to be listed

He wrote that American regulators have already deemed some tokens, Bitcoin among them, as non-securities, he stated, a number of cryptocurrencies remain unclear in that respect.

FTX US now intends to gather its own legal team that would analyze whether a digital asset, using the Howey Test, which has been used for decades to identify whether an asset is a security or not.

If the team believes that a token is a security, it will not be listed on FTX US, “unless there is a clear path for registration”, per Bankman-Fried. If the legal team says after making an analysis that a token is not a security, it will be treated as a commodity. Unless the court or the US commission on securities step in, stating otherwise.

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Bankman-Fried under investigation

As U.Today reported recently, the CEO of FTX and the American branch of the exchange, FTX US, are now being investigated by a securities regulatory agency based in Texas.

The filing submitted against the exchange and its founder claims that FTX US might be offering its clients unregistered securities in the form of yield-bearing accounts in the US.

It also says that FTX is not registered as a seller of payment tools or as a dealer of securities in the aforementioned state.

These allegations were submitted to a court that is dealing with the sale of assets belong to Voyager Digital. Earlier, FTX agreed to buy those assets for $51 million.