Senator Lummis has now changed her stance on Ether’s legal classification

Senator Lummis Now Believes Ether is a Security

“Lummis expressed her changed view on the asset with CoinDesk on Tuesday while discussing the measures that may have prevented FTX’s collapse last month. She suggested that her digital asset regulation bill proposed in June, which seeks to provide clarity on how to classify crypto assets, could have done so.

‘Right now, the way things sit, it’s starting to look more like Bitcoin is the only thing that would qualify as a commodity,’ she said.

The senator’s statement is a departure from her claims in June, which would have made room for Ether as a commodity, alongside Bitcoin. However, with Ethereum’s switch to a proof of stake consensus mechanism after September’s Merge, she believes it may not be sufficiently decentralized to meet the bar.

‘The inability to de-stake right now make it susceptible to being a security,’ she explained.

According to the Howey Test, a security is an asset issued by a centralized entity to raise money, whereby investors expect to profit from holding that asset based on the entity’s efforts. While Bitcoin is largely agreed not to pass the test, crypto proponents and regulators have long debated whether other digital assets are securities, commodities, or an entirely new asset class.”

https://cryptopotato.com/senator-lummis-now-believes-ether-is-a-security/