If you’ve stayed updated with the news, you likely have an idea or two about what’s been going on in Ethereum’s ecosystem as of late. Endless threads on the long-awaited triumph seized by leading blockchain software company Consensys company against the SEC have stolen the stage. Now, investors can breathe relief knowing that selling the native token of the Ethereum platform won’t put them at risk of fraud charges.

The second-best cryptocurrency by market capitalization has drawn plenty of attention lately given a few events, like the approval of exchange-traded funds based on it, the Ethereum price prediction depicting a positive picture, and the Pectra update, to name a few. Consensys, a giant invested in the Ethereum ecosystem, has recently announced that the SEC has ended the investigation on whether Ethereum sales should be treated as securities transactions.

The communication suggests that after the examination, the regulator decided it won’t pursue legal action against those selling Ethereum’s native currency, ETH. What does this mean? Should you care?

A quick recap

Let’s dig a bit into the past to see how Ethereum became unjustly associated with securities. In April of this year, Consensys, one of the biggest Ethereum development companies, took the world aback when it filed a suit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The institution was developed after the 1929 Wall Street Crash to oversee market participants and prevent and punish manipulation and unlawful behavior.

The legal action taken by Consensys wasn’t out of the blue; the SEC had called the company out on building the business, disregarding the regulatory background. It’s important to note that this legal undertaking, if successful, would have crippled much of blockchain’s progress, online crypto exchanges, and more innovative areas that proved to be of unmatched value. This daunting scenario didn’t come to fruition, having the global crypto community celebrate over the justice made in June of this year.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission remains involved in lawsuits with a few other giants in the industry. Still, hopefully, the world will rejoice over another triumph for Ethereum, even if the legal dispute must relocate to the Supreme Court.  

Why should one care?

As with every new technology, it’s critical to learn how using it could affect you. Now, you can use Ethereum freely, just like you’ve always done with Bitcoin since it’s always been considered a commodity. But things didn’t always stay this way. The SEC’s change of heart, leading it to associate Ethereum with security, brought fear among investors, users, trades, and so on. You didn’t have to invest in Ethereum for its speculative uses to have a hard time sleeping, knowing you may be doing something illegal if you’ve just used it to access the vast repository of Ethereum applications or developments on other blockchains that work with ETH.

Simply, ETH possessors would worry they’d be breaking the law if they were to buy ETH to use for all the services out there that were acceptable to them. What is regarded as one of the most groundbreaking technologies out there would be halted, destroying one of the most excellent inventions on the internet. Such a disaster would occur for Ethereum and other altcoins, stablecoins, and so on, all while Bitcoin would be spared these troubles. Needless to say, hardly anyone with a newfound enthusiasm for Ethereum would venture into it anymore.

Now, no one has to have qualms about their ETH possessions and their usage. The SEC has again, and hopefully permanently, come to treat Ethereum like wheat, gold, silver, oil futures, and options, to name a few commodities.

Things haven’t always been this way

What’s bewildering many old-stagers and knowledgeable newcomers alike is the fact that the SEC’s prominent representatives haven’t always thought of Ethereum as a security like they started doing a while ago. Ex-SEC Chair William Hinman exclaimed that the whole Ethereum network, its apps, and its decentralized nature couldn’t label ETH sales and offers as “security transactions.”

On the flip side, now-Chair of SEC and ex-Massachusetts professor Gary Gensler stated in 2018 that Ethereum, together with Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin, are not securities. Ethereum was already sufficiently decentralized not to be considered this way.

For starters, bonds, options, stocks, limited partnership interests, notes, and a number of other investment types represent securities. These are imposed completely different taxation regulations compared to the commodities that aren’t associated with no constant contractual undertaking having a participant profit from a company’s income or revenue.

Transactions in Ethereum do not involve continuing contractual undertakings, promotion-based profits, or interest in any firm. Whether you talk about Bitcoin or Ethereum, the advantages brought to owners are indistinguishable. Noteworthy, the talk is not about the speculative action of buying and selling assets to create cash flows from price fluctuations.

The SEC’s sketchy grasp of control over Ethereum would’ve spelled catastrophe for the network and the whole progress in blockchain registered to date. Fortunately, you can now invest and use Ethereum for its original purposes, some of the most popular ones being as follows.

What to use Ethereum for?

Amidst the sea of uses held by Ethereum, the following five are some of the most notable.

• Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), also known as organizations that don’t rely on any central authority

• Decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications where one can find numerous functionalities ranging from decentralized exchanges to decentralized lending leaning on smart contracts

• Payment methods used in business transactions, international remittance transactions, and so on, eliminating banks and third parties from the equation

• Digital identity management through smart contracts that solves the issues of theft, data leaks, digital data monopoly, and so on

• Development of a reliable voting system that can’t be compromised.

Ethereum is for everyone.

Representing a permissionless and public blockchain, Ethereum opens the room for experimentation, furthering the creation of numberless dApps. Each has its own use case, so if you have long wanted exposure to Ethereum, you can confidently venture into it now. Noteworthy, you’ll want to invest wisely and attentively to avoid hurting your financials, so do your math and due diligence before leapfrogging.