On November 8, the SEC filed its first settled enforcement action against cryptocurrency trading platform for operating as an unregistered exchange trading securities, in violation of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
"EtherDelta" was a platform offering matched-book secondary market trading of ERC-20 tokens, many of which had issued in unregistered initial-coin-offerings ("ICOs") having attributes of "securities" under the Howey investment-contract analysis. The Howey test was applied by the SEC in its July 2017 Section 21A Report, The DAO, to conclude that digital ...