Categories: U.S. Regulation

Consensys Suit Against U.S. SEC Dismissed by Texas Court

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had – for a time – added Consensys to a list of crypto investigation targets, prompting the technology incubator company to sue it for overreach in federal court. Because the regulator then shut down that Ethereum probe earlier this year, a Texas judge has decided the lack of immediate danger means the lawsuit is unwarranted.

Judge Reed O’Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas noted in a Thursday filing that “because withholding consideration subjects plaintiff to scant, if any, hardship, the claim lacks a ripe case or controversy.” In other words, since there’s no clear future threat to Consensys, there’s no point in this judge weighing in.

“In a significant win for the industry, the SEC dropped its ‘Ethereum 2.0’ investigation after our litigation was filed, and the Texas court today recognized that the SEC already gave Consensys the relief it sought on that critical issue for the Ethereum ecosystem,” the company said in a post on X.

Consensys argued that its lawsuit “laid bare the overzealous investigation of Ethereum, and policymakers and the public at large voiced deep concern over the SEC’s investigation of blockchain software development.”A spokesperson for the SEC declined to comment on the case being dismissed.

When Consensys sued the agency in April, it asked the court to declare that Ethereum’s ether (ETH) is not a security and that any investigation of ConsenSys based on the idea that the token is a security would trample on the company’s rights. It also contended that MetaMask is not a broker under federal law and that its staking service doesn’t violate securities law.

After backing down in the ETH investigation, the SEC did follow up with charges against Consensys later in June, alleging that the company’s MetaMask service was acting as an unregistered securities broker.

While the SEC hasn’t made a public statement about ETH’s status, last week, the regulator settled charges with eToro which let the trading platform continue listing ETH in the U.S.

Terron Gold

Recent Posts

Nasdaq Bets $100 Million on Kraken Parent Payward to Put Wall Street Stocks Onchain

Nasdaq is deepening its push into tokenized markets with a $100 million investment in Payward,…

5 days ago

MoneyGram Turns Stablecoins Into Everyday Money With New Mastercard

MoneyGram is pushing stablecoins beyond crypto trading and remittances with a new payment card designed…

5 days ago

Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP Memecoin Crashes 98% Within an Hour After Wild $1.6 Billion Debut

Hunter Biden’s newly launched LAPTOP memecoin delivered exactly the kind of chaos critics warned about…

6 days ago

Jack Dorsey’s Block Wants a Federal Bank Charter for Bitcoin and Stablecoin Custody

Jack Dorsey's Block is making another major move into regulated finance, applying to create a…

1 week ago

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok Go Down in Rare Simultaneous AI Outage

Some of the world's biggest AI platforms experienced overlapping service disruptions on Thursday, September 3,…

2 weeks ago

U.S. Government Puts GDP and Inflation Data Onchain With Chainlink

Official U.S. economic data is moving directly onto public blockchains. The U.S. Department of Commerce…

2 weeks ago