With the ongoing lawsuit with Ripple, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) now seems to have targeted the NFT sector in the crypto industry.
According to a report served by Bloomberg, the SEC has begun investigating NFT developers and sales platforms. The SEC's focus is on determining whether NFTs have securities properties. According to an unnamed source in the Bloomberg report, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has started sending subpoenas to its developers to learn about some NFT projects.
Split NFTs under the spotlight
The main issue in the US commission's scrutiny of the NFT market is related to the fact that split NFTs have a security feature. Split NFTs are created by splitting crypto assets known as high-value immutable tokens. The sale of these assets is interpreted by the SEC as having a security feature. That's why the SEC decided to put the NFT market on its radar.
This issue, which has come to the fore again, is actually a situation that the commission has been following since last year. So much so that SEC commissioner Hester Peirce, who is known for her closeness to the crypto industry, warned last year that dividing NFTs and selling them could create a situation against securities laws.
The SEC is watching the crypto industry closely
Apart from this latest development, which shows that the SEC is following the crypto money markets closely, it was also on the agenda that the US-based crypto loan company BlockFi was sentenced to a record penalty by the institution last month. The SEC fined BlockFi $100 million for offering high-yield loan products without registering them as securities. The company is now making an attempt to register these products.
The lawsuit filed between the SEC and Ripple that XRP is a security has been ongoing since December 2020. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler continues his view that many cryptocurrencies fall into the securities class. He bases this view on the premise that an investor's investment in an asset for the purpose of making a profit makes that asset a security.
NFTs continue to be in demand
If we go back to the NFT issue, there has not been an official statement from the institution yet. Besides, the NFT market continues to be a rapidly growing market in the crypto industry. Despite the overall market decline, NFTs continue to be in high demand. OpenSea and Look Rare, two of the largest platforms in this market, have had a transaction volume of approximately 10.7 billion dollars in the last 1 month.
Although the size of the NFT market is currently low compared to other markets, there are opinions that NFTs have a serious growth potential in the near future.
