The CRC, a Coinbase-backed group of major US cryptocurrency firms seeking regulatory clarity, has welcomed eToro and OKCoin.
Coinbase announced on January 16th that the Crypto Rating Council (CRC), which was officially launched on September 30th, 2019, has expanded to include members such as the trading platform eToro, the cryptocurrency exchange OKCoin, and Radar, the startup behind the decentralized exchange Radar Relay.
CRC Also Includes Crypto-Finance Firm Circle
It should be noted that, as new participants join eight other industry leaders on the council, the CRC now has eleven companies striving to obtain more clarity from the US securities law on cryptocurrencies.
Among CRC members are also Kraken Exchange, the Goldman Sachs-backed crypto-finance firm Circle, Bittrex, Genesis Global Trading, Grayscale Investments, Anchor Labs, the Cumberland unit of DRW Holdings, and Coinbase itself.
The CRC aims to jointly determine which digital assets should be considered securities and, therefore, be under the jurisdiction of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As part of the effort, the CRC has published online ratings on digital assets on a scale from 1.00 to 5.00 scale, where the highest score means that a token is likely to be considered as a security and cannot be sold by unregulated companies.
New Digital Assets in CRC Online Ratings
Together with the new members, the CRC has also announced five new digital assets that are joining its public online ratings. According to that information, the CRC Securities Framework Asset Ratings added well-known cryptocurrencies such as Dash (DASH), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Cosmos (ATOM), as well as lesser-known altcoins such as Horizen (ZEN) and Livepeer (LPT).
According to the ratings, Dash is one of the six cryptocurrencies that are classified as 1.00, at the time of writing this article, and the CRC considers that it does not represent a security together with Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), the privacy-oriented altcoin Monero (XMR), Dai (DAI) and Horizen.
Meanwhile, Ethereum Classic is rated 2.00 along with its predecessor Ether (ETH), which means that these cryptocurrencies are more likely to be securities to date.
It is worth mentioning that Coinbase said that the analysis by the CRC is “its own and not endorsed by any asset development team or foundation, any regulator, or any other third party.”
XRP is Rated 4.00
XRP is an example of a token that still requires to be classified. Heath Tarbert, Chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a key Wall Street regulator, recently said that it is unclear whether XRP is under the jurisdiction of the CFTC or the SEC. According to CRC ratings, XRP is likely to be a value as it has one of the highest ratings among all the digital assets analyzed, being rated at 4.00, at the time of writing this note.
It was reported that there is uncertainty regarding the regulatory status of XRP, especially after the issuer of the Ripple token faced a class-action lawsuit alleging that he had violated the securities law by selling his tokens. Subsequently, the firm filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in early December 2019, alleging that the case is contradictory and counterproductive.
By Alexander Salazar
