The American Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claimed in a court yesterday that they have total jurisdiction over the Ethereum (ETH) network. According to the regulator, a majority of all nodes are located in the United States and it can thus be stated that all Ethereum transactions take place within this country.
The SEC Is Going After Ethereum
This claim was made in a lawsuit between the SEC and YouTuber Ian Balina. Balina would not have disclosed what his compensation has been for promoting the Sparkster crypto project and the SPRK token, according to the SEC. In addition, Balina allegedly failed to register with the SEC for selling SPRK tokens within its own investing pool.
According to the SEC, Balina’s company is guilty of attracting more than $30 million from investors in the United States by selling them unregistered securities.
The SPRK token is an ERC-20 token that runs on the Ethereum network. For that reason, of course, the Ethereum network was also discussed during the lawsuit. This is where the SEC made the remarkable claim that all Ethereum transactions originate within the United States.
“At that time, SPRK investors’ ETH contributions were being validated by a network of nodes on the Ethereum blockchain, which are more densely clustered in the United States than in any other country. As a result, those transactions took place in the United States.”
Ethereum Decentralization
First of all, it doesn’t seem right that a majority of Ethereum nodes are based in the United States. According to dates from ethernodes.org this is only 42.33%.
In addition, assuming that a majority of the nodes were located in the United States, is that reason enough to state that in fact all Ethereum transactions originate in the United States? This is, of course, quite easy to reject.
