A lawyer believes that, in some cases, non-fungible tokens can be considered securities. However, the legal professional believe that the recent Wells notice sent by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to OpenSea is not a good use of their time.
On Aug. 28, OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer said that the company received a Wells notice from the SEC, saying that the government agency believes that NFTs on their platform are securities.
A Wells notice from the SEC is a formal warning indicating that the government agency may take enforcement action against a company. It typically outlines the regulator’s case and gives the potentially accused firm an opportunity to respond to the allegations.
In a Cointelegraph interview, Oscar Franklin Tan, the chief legal officer of Web3 organization Atlas Development, explained how NFTs could be classified as securities but why the new SEC action is not warranted.
How NFTs can be securities in some cases
Tan explained that in “certain” ways, NFTs can be considered as securities. The lawyer explained that among the many use cases of NFTs. Some may resemble investment products. The lawyer said that NFTs can be classified as securities in these cases. Tan explained:
“For example, if I mint stock certificates as NFTs and say you can claim dividends using these, then those, of course, sound like securities. But this is not the NFT people expect to find on OpenSea, NFT.io, and other marketplaces, right?”
Tan told Cointelegraph that there may be legal grounds to classify very specific categories of NFTs as securities. However, the conversation should be “carefully tailored” to those aspects. If not, the agency risks scaring away content creation and stifling experimentation with the new technology.
The lawyer explained that these Wells notices that the SEC has issued only “start guessing games” and do not provide any clarity about the rules surrounding Web3 technology.
“They do everything but give us clear rules to follow. They are not productive…
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