[bardworx]

Predominantly, from my understanding, it’s because:

1. Bitcoin was classified as “currency” by Clayton.

2. It’s the closest to being decentralized so no “organization will benefit from the work of others”.

3. Growth of Bitcoin wasn’t initially speculative but as a use of currency, which is different from whatever token you fork as its goal would be for speculative trading, failing the Howey test.

[Mistletoe]

Clayton said the same about Ethereum.

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2019/03/12/sec-chair-clayto...

[robocat]

That was when Etherium was proof-of-work. I imagine it gets complicated now that you can earn staking rewards on your ETH, even though by default you earn 0% because by default you are not staking. So one major feature of “banking” your ETH at an exchange would be so the exchange provides a way to earn the “interest” on your deposit.

This creates a regulatory risk, and is one reason for owning BTC instead of ETH. Note I own a few ETH and 0 BTC, and ETH has dropped 10% compared against BTC recently (normally they seem to be highly correlated (even long-term) which implies to me that the market is somewhat driven by generic crypto sector investing).

Edit: Coinbase’s argument that their staking service is not a security: https://www.coinbase.com/blog/coinbases-staking-services-are...

[codehalo]

Nothing you said here makes a fork of the bitcoin code with a completely different genesis block (or ANY fork at ANY block of the bitcoin chain) a security.

[bardworx]

Why would people buy it?

[humanizersequel]

>[arbitrary non-BTC token]'s goal would be for speculative trading

I doubt this claim with extreme prejudice.

[nonethewiser]

Does this address forking it making it a security? It doesn’t seem like it but I’m trying not to jump to conclusions.