SEC Advisory Committee member calls agency to open for public comment on crypto regulation

cointelegraph.com:

Associate law professor and member of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Investor Advisory Committee J.W. Verret is calling for the government agency to open for public comment in regards to digital asset regulation.

In a petition addressed to SEC Secretary Vanessa Countryman, Verret said opening the floor to comments on digital assets could function as a Genesis Block for the SEC to reform its regulations on digital assets. Verret said he was a holder of Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and “a number of layer 1 and layer 2 tokens readily available on top tier exchanges,” and was concerned how the SEC could potentially crack down on tokens it currently does not consider securities.

“Under the SEC’s ‘strategically ambiguous’ interpretation of the Howey test regarding classification of investment contracts, I cannot be certain that the SEC will not in the future target one of my token holdings, under the guise of the Commission’s investor protection mission, in a manner that would ultimately cause me significant losses as a property owner,” said Verret. “This open call for comment is the only way to appropriately crowd source this issue and appropriately develop a digital asset regulation Genesis Block.”

I filed a reg petition with the SEC to open a call for public comment re: digital asset regulation. There are nuances that SEC ignores in their speeches and "Howey" threats. Let's crowd source this and start a genesis block for 21st century reg. https://t.co/lZQXPeqq93

Since the 1940s, the SEC has used the Howey Test to determine whether certain assets qualify as "investment contracts" and are considered securities. Many experts consider the SEC's 2017 DAO Report, in which it said that digital assets could indeed qualify, as