As of July 12, the Israel-based investing platform eToro will no longer allow U.S. Customers to buy four cryptocurrencies accused of being securities by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company said that after the July 12 cutoff, U.S. Customers will still be able to hold and sell the affected coins—Algorand (ALGO), Decentraland (MANA), Dash (DASH), and Polygon (MATIC)—but no longer purchase them via the platform.
The news, announced by the company in a tweet thread on Monday, comes after the SEC sued Binance and Coinbase last week. Across both lawsuits, the agency, led by Chairman Gary Gensler, labeled a total of 19 cryptocurrencies as securities.
“We remain a supporter of cryptoassets and believe in the importance of offering our users access to a diversified range of asset classes, which includes stocks, ETFs, and options,” eToro tweeted.
The investment platform is following U.S.-based Robinhood in delisting cryptocurrencies singled out by the SEC. Last week, Robinhood said it would remove Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), and Polygon, telling users that any existing tokens in their wallets following the firm’s cutoff date at the end of June will be sold for market value.
When contacted by Coins2Day, eToro sent a statement that matched its Twitter thread.
On Monday, a video from 2018 surfaced in which Gensler, before he became SEC chair, is seen telling a group of institutional investors that Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash are not securities. The sentiments seem to contradict his current stance that all cryptocurrencies except for Bitcoin are securities. Supporters of Ether, though, breathed a sigh of relief last week as the second-most-popular cryptocurrency was not named as a security in the SEC lawsuits against Coinbase and Binance.
Whether Coinbase and Binance will settle with the SEC or go to court is unknown. The cases could take several years to be decided. A 2020 suit by the SEC against Ripple and two of its executives over alleged securities violations has yet to conclude, although the company’s CEO expects it to be decided soon.
