{"id":17197,"date":"2024-09-23T15:20:39","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T12:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/opensea-faces-lawsuit-alleging-nfts-as-securities\/"},"modified":"2024-09-23T15:20:39","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T12:20:39","slug":"opensea-faces-lawsuit-alleging-nfts-as-securities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/opensea-faces-lawsuit-alleging-nfts-as-securities\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenSea Faces Lawsuit Alleging NFTs as Securities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two clients of OpenSea have filed a class-action lawsuit against the NFT marketplace, accusing it of selling unregistered securities contracts. This was reported by <a href=\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/news\/opensea-users-nfts-securities-class-lawsuit\">Cointelegraph<\/a> citing court documents. <\/p>\n<p>Anthony Schneiderman and Itai Bronstein claimed that the non-fungible tokens purchased on the platform, including Bored Ape Yacht Club, are worthless &#8220;due to their illegal nature.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The plaintiffs pointed to <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/dfinzer\/status\/1828791832009953706\">OpenSea&#8217;s disclosure<\/a> of a Wells notice from the <span data-descr=\"U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission\" class=\"old_tooltip\">SEC<\/span> in August. In their view, the situation indicates that the marketplace &#8220;is in a difficult position and may be held liable for facilitating the exchange of unregistered securities.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit also references successful SEC actions against NFT projects Stoner Cats 2 and Impact Theory, which faced allegations of unlicensed securities offerings in the form of non-fungible token sales.<\/p>\n<p>The plaintiffs argue that the Howey Test indicates NFTs qualify as investment contracts under U.S. law, as they represent a financial investment in a common enterprise with an expectation of profit. <\/p>\n<p>According to the lawsuit, token listings on OpenSea were &#8220;deceptive and misled investors into purchasing worthless and illegal securities.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Schneiderman and Bronstein assert that the marketplace violated its user agreement, which obliges the company &#8220;to moderate the OpenSea exchange to protect against unregistered securities.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;Given today&#8217;s ever-changing regulation, a process for selling NFTs in a well-regulated environment is necessary. We look forward to working with OpenSea to structure the best path and future process for both consumers and the crypto industry,&#8221; noted Adam Moskowitz, the attorney representing the plaintiffs from Moskowitz Law Firm. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In September, NFT Evening experts concluded that 96% of non-fungible tokens are dead.<\/p>\n<p>In the same month, CEO of Pudgy Penguins Luca Netz described NFTs as the best way to build a community. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two clients of OpenSea have filed a class-action lawsuit against the NFT marketplace, accusing it of selling unregistered securities contracts. This was reported by Cointelegraph citing court documents. Anthony Schneiderman and Itai Bronstein claimed that the non-fungible tokens purchased on the platform, including Bored Ape Yacht Club, are worthless &#8220;due to their illegal nature.&#8221; The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"","news_style_id":"","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1162,1213,1265],"class_list":["post-17197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-court-cases","tag-nft","tag-opensea"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"31","promo_type":"","layout_type":"","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}