What’s really at odds in the suit against Brady and Bundchen, which also named basketballer Stephen Curry, comedian Larry David, and other celebrities involved in the PR side of FTX, is just what cryptocurrency is and does under U.S. law. The same question will likely determine the value of tokens owned by people like Brady who have invested some portion of their net worth in crypto.
In short, U.S. law has not yet decided whether cryptocurrency assets are securities or not. Securities, as defined by Investopedia, are fungible, negotiable financial instruments with some degree of monetary value. Assets defined as securities fall under various legal requirements in the United States. They’re subject to regulation by the SEC as well as oversight by private self-regulatory organizations in the financial sector.
By most standards, crypto tokens qualify as securities: they’re fungible financial instruments and they certainly get traded. Arguments against regulation generally hinge on whether they have “monetary value” in the narrow sense of being worth a calculable number of U.S. dollars. Forbes has the details.
The larger issue is that cryptocurrency benefits from not being regulated like securities. If crypto had to follow the same rules as stocks, bonds, options, and other securities, token value across every exchange accessible in the U.S. would nosedive. Investors in cryptocurrency, Brady included, would lose their shirts.
In the end, that may be a bigger…
