The Uniswap Judge Refers to Ether as a Product in the Dismissal Order.
US District Court Judge Katherine Polk Failla is also overseeing the Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against crypto exchange Coinbase.
The US District Court has identified Ether as a $1,648 commodity in dismissing a class action lawsuit against decentralized exchange Uniswap.
In an Aug. 30 dismissal filed by Uniswap users who allege they lost money to fraudulent tokens on the exchange, Judge Katherine Polk Failla wrote that ETH and Bitcoin BTC $25,975 was “crypto commodities.”
The distinction was also part of her reasoning for dismissing the case — Failla said she was unconvinced by an argument that Uniswap’s token sales were subject to the Exchange Act.
Interestingly, Failla is also the judge overseeing the SEC lawsuit against Coinbase. She also had experience handling other crypto cases in the past, including one involving Tether and Bitfinex.
The SDNY (Failla, J.) also explicitly found in its August 29 decision in Risely v. Uniswap that
Ethereum is a commodity, not a security.
No analysis of the issue, just the conclusion, but still, pretty definitive statement if you ask me.
👀👀👀 pic.twitter.com/KEc5Pf5kTC
— Bill Hughes : wchughes.eth 🦊 (@BillHughesDC) August 30, 2023
While your comment is not a clear decision on the legal classification of ether in the US, it is coming Other judges have made rulings on cryptocurrencies, such as a July ruling classifying XRP XRP $0.51 as collateral when sold to institutional investors.
In recent years, two U.S. financial regulators, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, have clashed over cryptocurrency jurisdiction.
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler once claimed that “anything but Bitcoin” is a security under his agency’s purview.
Meanwhile, the CFTC has laid claim to ETH and other cryptocurrencies as commodities, following a lawsuit it filed against Binance in March alleging violations of the Commodities Exchange Act.
