OpenSea’s lawyers argue NFT marketplaces should be exempt from SEC regulation, as they don’t fit the definition of a broker.
Non-fungible token marketplace OpenSea has urged the US Securities and Exchange Commission to exclude NFT marketplaces from regulation under federal securities laws.
The SEC needs to “clearly state that NFT marketplaces like OpenSea do not qualify as exchanges under federal securities laws,” OpenSea general counsel Adele Faure and deputy general counsel Laura Brookover said in an April 9 letter to Commissioner Hester Peirce, who leads the agency’s Crypto Task Force.
Faure and Brookover argued that NFT marketplaces don’t meet the legal definition of an exchange under US securities laws as they don’t execute transactions, act as intermediaries or bring together multiple sellers for the same asset.
