Yesterday we posted about the SEC insider trading case which is attempting to claim that crypto assets are securities and trading on material, non-public information regarding them violates the federal securities laws.

SEC Files First Crypto Insider Trading Case, But the Trading Doesn’t Involve a Security

Today we learned of a class action lawsuit filed against Solana Labs, a for-profit company working on the development of the Solana blockchain, in a California federal court last week accusing the company and people within the ecosystem of making illegal profits and promoting its token, SOL, as an unregistered security.

The outcome of the lawsuit could have major implications for the future of the crypto industry, which has had to function for years under a cloud of uncertainty about whether its tokens should qualify as securities. If SOL is determined to be a security, it could open up many similar tokens available on prominent crypto exchanges such as Coinbase, Kraken, Binance, and others to similar scrutiny. Ultimately these platforms could be forced to de-list SOL and other major crypto tokens. For context, Coinbase and Kraken, along with many other platforms de-listed XRP in late 2020 when the SEC sued San Francisco-based Ripple for selling $1.3 billion of the asset to purchasers in what it called an unregistered security.