Odaily Frontline | The US SEC intends to use contractors to operate BTC and ETH nodes: step up monitoring or relax supervision?
This article comes fromTrustnodes
Odaily Translator |
This article comes from
Odaily Translator |
The SEC plans to use contractors to operate one bitcoin and one ethereum node, as well as nodes on as many blockchains as possible including Bitcoin Cash, Stellar, Zcash, EOS, NEO and XRP Ledger. The SEC did not provide any specific rationale for why it needed to run its own nodes, saying only that the move was "to support its monitoring of risk, improving compliance, and informing the Commission of its policies regarding digital assets." The SEC specifically states that "subscriptions should be able to obtain all blockchain data from hosted nodes, rather than making this data available as a secondary source (e.g., via a blockchain explorer)." So they may be looking for an analytics company to outsource SEC's Blockchain Monitoring and Compliance Investigation.
SEC Requirements for ContractorsThe SEC also wants data including "hash algorithms, computing power, mining difficulty and rewards, number and size of transactions, cryptocurrency supply, and blockchain size," among other things. This kind of data is freely provided by a large number of blockchain explorers, but probably they want analysis and not just data, because the SEC instructions require that contractors should do: "Demonstrate data cleansing and normalization with a level of rigor consistent with financial Requirements for reporting audit testing. If attribution data is provided, please describe the process and data sources for blending blockchain data with attribution data points to gain insight."
According to the SEC, all data from the genesis block should be provided once, and then should be updated daily through some information source (feed), preferably using the API method of their choice. Add new blockchains.
This means that the SEC may want to implement an online monitoring system to see or guess who is doing what, but why bitcoin is included is unclear.
What does the SEC's move mean?As a decentralized, permissionless open network, anyone can run a Bitcoin node and access all data, but the SEC has no jurisdiction over Bitcoin. However, activity on the Bitcoin blockchain may fall within their remit. For example, ethereum raised funds on the bitcoin blockchain before its official launch four years ago.The SEC has stated that ethereum is not a security, but it has yet to clarify whether XRP is, or whether any of the many better-known tokens running on ethereum are or are not securities.
Perhaps the system was created (via contractors) precisely so that the SEC could determine whether a token or project is a security,
But people should have expected the SEC to do this kind of research some time ago.
Additionally, it may have something to do with the SEC establishing a more permissive framework — by adapting their policies to the unique qualities of blockchain. This can be very relevant to compliant tokens, in other words, these tokens may be approved by the SEC.
With the help of this new system, the compliance burden faced by such security tokens will be reduced, as many aspects will be automatically generated through blockchain analysis.
The SEC has been active recently. In July alone, the issuance of tokens has been approved three times under the premise of compliance, namely:
1. The SEC Corporate Finance Supervision Department issued a no-action objection letter to the blockchain game company Pocketful of Quarters (PoQ), allowing the company to issue game tokens on the Ethereum blockchain and sell the tokens. Quarters is a token created according to the ERC-20 standard, the first of its kind to receive approval from US regulators. PoQ CEO George Weiksner stated that Quarters is a stable currency, and as the sole seller, PoQ will set the token price as part of the SEC's compliance requirements for the company. Additionally, PoQ is also raising funds through a registered securities sale using investment tokens, which will be separate from the Quarters sale. The dual-token system is used to ensure that users use Quarters to transact rather than hold these tokens in the hope of earning a reward. The no-action objection letter requires PoQ to keep a number of promises, including ensuring that players cannot sell, buy, or exchange tokens with each other. Instead, only developer or "influencer" accounts can transact with players.
2. The SEC approved the sale of Bitcoin-like digital tokens by block chain startup Blockstack, the first of its kind, which may provide a new funding template for young cryptocurrency companies. A lawyer for Blockstack said the SEC approved a $28 million token offering under Reg A+, an alternative to an IPO designed to help start-ups raise capital. The company plans to start selling tokens to the public on Thursday through a website created for the product.
