Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee and the House Committee on Agriculture requested clarification from the SEC as to whether the Ethereum token, Ether, is a security.
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SIFMA supported a Congressional joint resolution sponsored by Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Representatives Mike Flood (R-NE) and Wiley Nickel (D-NC) to disapprove SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 121, which prevents banks from providing custodial services to digital assets investors by requiring them to keep those assets on-balance sheet.
The SEC charged an online crypto asset trading platform for failing to register with the SEC as an exchange, as a clearing agency and as a broker-dealer of crypto asset securities.
House Financial Services Committee Chair Patrick McHenry (R-NC) and a bipartisan group of legislators asked banking regulators to clarify "through guidance and other actions" that an SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin, which describes how a custodian must account for digital assets, is not enforceable.
House Financial Services Committee members Mike Flood (R-NE), Ritchie Torres (D-NY), French Hill (R-AR) and Wiley Nickel (D-NC) introduced the Uniform Treatment of Custodial Assets Act. The proposed legislation would prohibit financial institutions from including crypto assets held in their custody as a liability on their balance sheet.