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“The stakes aren’t just high for Prometheum and the rest of the industry, but also for the government agency that has claimed for years that there’s a proper way for crypto firms to ‘come in and register’ to do business in the U.S.; Prometheum came in and registered but what happens next is unclear. And while it tests these murky waters, it may also help establish whether the SEC intends to view ETH as a security.”
Prometheum is able to offer both custody and trading in those digital assets because, unusually, it has licenses to do both. That means it can “legally sling Ethereum as a security,” in the words of Fortune’s Jeff John Roberts and hope that “regulators have no choice but to recognize the designation.” In this scenario, Prometheum would then be the only platform for legally trading ether, the security — a pretty nice natural monopoly if you can get it.
The question,…