Billionaire Mark Cuban Suggests How Crypto Can Avoid SEC Lawsuits in Future
Shark Tank co-host, billionaire and investor Mark Cuban has commented on a recently published tweet about the SEC proclaiming Filecoin (FIL) a security, and the SEC's letter sent to Grayscale about this issue. The latter filed an application to register an investment fund based on FIL earlier this year and received the reply that FIL meets the criteria of a security on May 16.
Cuban, who has come a long way from being a crypto hater to a vocal crypto supporter, has suggested a way that future crypto companies could become completely decentralized and avoid conflicts with the U.S. securities regulator in the future.
Here's Mark Cuban's suggestion
Cuban stated that a possible scenario for crypto-issuing platforms is for them to release the entire supply of their tokens without keeping a portion as a treasury. The released tokens should be used to provide liquidity using DeFi and then, Cuban says, the original entity that released the tokens should dissolve.
In that case "there is true decentralization," the billionaire believes, and regulators, such as the SEC, will be unable to "close the token down," accusing it of being a security, like it has been doing with XRP, FIL and other cryptos.
This won’t work with filecoin or chains that release their own token, but what may come next is for tokens is to release them all, leaving no treasury, take the receipts and use them to provide liquidity using defi for trains the token , and then dissolve the original entity…
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) May 23, 2023
Pro-XRP lawyer responds to Cuban
CryptoLaw founder and vocal Ripple supporter in the SEC case John Deaton commented on that, stating that "this is smart and probably in someone's playbook at the moment." Still, the lawyer insists that the crypto community and blockchain companies must keep fighting with the narrative pushed by the SEC, according to which every token except Bitcoin is a security.
In an investment contract, Deaton wrote, "the underlying asset is never the security."
This is smart and probably in someone’s playbook at the moment. But we must continue to fight the SEC’s narrative that the the underlying asset itself (the token) is the security. In an investment contract, the underlying asset is NEVER the security. https://t.co/hhayixgnJR
— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) May 24, 2023
Grayscale's reaction to SEC's letter
A recently published press release says that Grayscale does not agree with the SEC about Filecoin's FIL token being a security under the federal laws on securities, and it intends to send a response to the regulatory agency soon.
Grayscale currently cannot predict the reaction of the SEC, and should the regulator disagree, Grayscale will be seeking other ways to register a trust under the Investment Company Act of 1940. If this fails, it will apply to shut down the FIL Trust, according to the press release.