Republican representative William Timmon has to surround the chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Paul Atkins, documents on the historical treatment of ether by the agency under his chairman of the biden era, Gary Gensler.
In a letter on Tuesday, Timmons asked about “specific documents” on the “historical views of the Sec concerning the status of Ether (Eth), which he argued that they might help the general public and the congress to know the approach of previous leadership.
“After an earlier leadership, the SEC refused to formulate a consistent, coherent view of how the securities laws apply to digital assets. The zigzag -greedy approach to the ETH is a typical example,” says the letter.
Gensler “doubts to ETH as chairman”
Timmons found that the then director of the Corporate Finance of the Sec, William Hinman, said in 2018 that the agency wouldn’t treat Bitcoin (BTC) or ETH as securities.
However, he claimed that Gensler as chairman “had the status of the ETH in query by repeatedly refusing to reply questions on whether the SEC ETH is considered security” during a hearing in April 2023.
“As could be announced later, the SEC days before this certificate approved a proper examination whether ETH is a security,” wrote Timmons.
Source: William Timmons
A 12 months later, the SEC approved by moderately Exchange funds that Timmons said “would only be appropriate if ETH is just not security”, and the Sec Castle “a number of weeks later” in ETH.
“These repeated wear and tear causes destabilizing confusion for hundreds of thousands of American cryptoma market participants,” he added.
Brief adds Coinbase Foia campaign
Timmon's letter follows a FOIA request (Freedom of Information Act), which was supported by Crypto Exchange Coinbase in 2023 and the SEC asked for documents on their views on ETH.
The SEC filed the appliance and led Coinbase to sue the SEC for alleged Foia violations in June 2024.
A judge later ordered the SEC to reveal certain documents, of which 1000’s of Coinbase were published online. One of them shows that the general public prosecutor's office in New York unsuccessfully asked the Sec for her opinion on ETH.
