Jack Dorsey courts controversy by claiming ETH is a security

Jack Dorsey, a long-time supporter of Bitcoin (BTC), has sparked a Twitter dispute with some crypto experts after he answered “yes” to a query about whether Ether (ETH) is a security.

Udi Wertheimer, a Bitcoin Ordinals developer at Taproot Wizards, noticed the comment and tweeted on June 6 that it made Dorsey look like a “clown”.

In response, Dorsey tweeted, “ETH is not a security? Teach me, O wise one,” which prompted Wertheimer to share a video from five years ago of Gary Gensler, the Chair of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, declaring that ETH was sufficiently decentralized and therefore not a security.

Gabor Gurbacs, a strategy advisor to Tether, a stablecoin issuer, and VanEck, an investment management firm, responded to Wertheimer’s statement, saying that Ethereum’s shift to proof-of-stake might have reactivated securities regulations.

The SEC’s filing of lawsuits against cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Coinbase on June 5th and 6th respectively, for offering tokens thought to be unregistered securities, has caused an online stir.

Dorsey shared and seemed to agree with a screenshot of a post by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong from 2015, in which Armstrong referred to altcoins as a “diversion” and suggested Coinbase should concentrate on Bitcoin instead.

Dorsey kept up his supportive tweeting of Bitcoin and shared a video of Jack Mallers – CEO of Bitcoin Lightning application Strike – criticizing Armstrong for focusing on altcoins instead of developing on Bitcoin and the Lightning Network.

Jack Dorsey has predicted that pro-crypto candidate Robert Kennedy will be successful in the presidential election.

When Dorsey was running Twitter in 2021, he sold 140 Ethereum-based non-fungible tokens (NFTs) but declined to invest in Ether at that time.

In August 2021, Dorsey also minimized Ethereum’s progress, asserting that Ethereum alone would not be able to challenge major tech companies.

Jack Dorsey recently invested in and voiced his support for Nostr, a decentralized social network that uses Bitcoin Lightning-based payments on the Damus platform, which is seen as a potential competitor to Twitter.

Does SEC Chair Gary Gensler have the ultimate authority when it comes to cryptocurrency regulation?