SEC’s Hinman provides helpful guidance for analyzing digital assets under the US securities laws.

William Hinman, Director of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Division of Corporation Finance, provided substantial color on the SEC’s evolving view of digital asset classification recently when he shared his thoughts on how to characterize purchases and sales of digital assets under US securities laws (the securities laws), as part of the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit: Crypto. While the headline moment occurred when he stated his belief that current transactions in Bitcoin and Ether are not securities transactions, he also laid out a framework for his reasoning that has greater implications for digital asset market participants generally.