What exactly is cryptocurrency? Is it money? Is it goods and services? Or is it an investment

asset like a stock? For the last several years, the Securities and Exchange Commission,

the SEC, has argued that most cryptocurrencies are actually more like stocks, or in its

parlance securities. And if they're securities, the SEC says it should regulate them.

Why is it important for the SEC to label crypto as a security? The SEC is the regulator that oversees

securities and regulates securities like stocks and bonds. So it has jurisdiction over securities.

By labeling these cryptocurrencies as securities, it's establishing the authority over these

companies that issues cryptocurrencies. That's our colleague, Vicki Huang. The SEC has brought in

number of cases against crypto companies and exchanges over the years. These lawsuits differ in

several ways, but a lot of them center around this idea that some cryptocurrencies should be regulated

by the government. One of the earliest examples of these lawsuits goes back to 2020 against a

company called Ripple, and its crypto token, XRP. The lawsuit revolved around whether XRP

should be classified as a security and registered with the regulator before being issued to the public.

The crypto world has sternly rejected this classification. This type of regulation is often seen

as antithetical to the open transparent goals of crypto. And last week, there was a major ruling

in that 2020 case that could have big implications for the entire industry and for the SEC.

Welcome to the journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Kate Limbaugh,

it's Tuesday, July 18th.

Coming up on the show, a game-changing ruling for crypto.

Ripple Labs was founded in 2012. Its main goal was to simplify how banks in different countries

transfer money to each other. So Ripple is one of the earliest crypto startups. It's based in

San Francisco, and the main mission of the company is to build a Bitcoin-like payments platform,

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