The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is officially supporting the NFT Marketplace Opensea investigation. This is yet another example of the crypto industry that has benefited from loose regulations under the Trump administration.
Opensea co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer shared the news late Friday. The announcement came shortly after the announcement that Coinbase's SEC is removing lawsuits against them.
“SEC has concluded its investigation [Opensea]. Finzer declared with X. All creators, big and small, should be free to build without unnecessary barriers. ”
Last August, Finzer revealed that Opensea received a Wells notification warning for potential fees related to unregistered securities. Opensea vowed to fight back, but now it appears that the market is at the top.
Trump's Second: From crackdown to coded love letters
If this all sounds like a pattern, then that's because. According to Bloomberg, President Donald Trump has received millions of campaign contributions from the crypto industry heading for the 2024 election.
Gary Jensler, former SEC chairman and former Goldman Sachs banker, became a regulated bulldog and led the strictest crackdown the crypto industry has ever seen. Under his surveillance, the SEC came after all of the Titans in the industry, including Opensea, Coinbase, Ripple, and others, the companies behind XRP.
Ripple and SEC have been legal spat since 2020. Regulators accused Ripple Labs of selling unregistered securities, but Judge Analisa Torres said that while XRP is not security when it was sold to an exchange, the agency's sales violated the securities law. I decided that it was decided. She ordered Ripple to pay $125 million. This was significantly lower than the SEC's initial $2 billion demand.
The parties filed an appeal, but the SEC is able to withdraw the case as Trump appointed pro-cryptic SEC commissioner Paul Atkins as an agency chair.
Essentially, the cryptography crackdown under Gensler is currently slowing down, with agents taking a more laissez-faire approach exemplified in the Coinbase and Opensy announcements.
Opensea's Sea Airdrop
Opensea, meanwhile, is not just celebrating the SEC victory. They also hold parties in the form of ocean token airdrops. The Opensea Foundation announced Thursday that it will reward active, loyal and longtime users of the NFT market and Seaport Protocol with free tokens.
The details are still vague when the Sea Token actually fires, but Opensea traders are already rubbing their hands in light of free digital booty. The company has also rolled out its new multi-chain trading platform, OS2.
