It was fun while it lasted. For nearly three weeks, crypto enthusiasts have been riding high following a federal judge's decision to side with Ripple over the Securities and Exchange Commission on the question of when a digital asset—XRP in that case—is a security. But now comes the cold water.
On Monday, a second federal judge in New York took up the same question in another digital asset case—this one involving the failed Terra stablecoin—and came to a very different conclusion. Actually, said U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, selling tokens on secondary markets like exchanges does not change their status. They are still securities. And yes, he was aware of the Ripple ruling, writing "the court rejects the approach recently adopted by another judge of this district in a similar case."
