Fitzee

Immutable has received a Wells notice from the SEC, the latest in their de facto policy of regulation by enforcement. We received this within hours of our first ever conversation, on a timeline clearly accelerated to land before an election. Sadly, stories like this are becoming less surprising each time. We’ve seen an increasing number of companies like @Coinbase, @Consensys, @Uniswap, @OpenSea, @cryptocom face SEC escalations, many in the last two months. With this latest move against Immutable, the SEC’s overreach continues and expands into gaming. Immutable is well capitalized with a large war-chest to build for the future of gaming, and if needed, we will stand up and fight to defend digital ownership for gamers. But the SEC’s approach hinders every startup trying to innovate in an already difficult industry. Read our full statement here: immutable.com/blog/defending… Under the current administration, the SEC has filed (and lost) a string of lawsuits, seeking to regulate crypto via enforcement rather than policy. Last year, Ripple won a “landmark victory” where Judge Torres found that XRP was not a security. After publicly stating Ethereum was a commodity, the SEC secretly opened an investigation into ETH. They shut this investigation down after Consensys sued them to defend Ethereum’s ecosystem in June of this year. Last year, Grayscale sued the SEC to open the floodgates for institutional adoption of crypto. They won, with the court finding the SEC’s denial of Grayscale’s proposal "arbitrary and capricious.” In recent weeks we’ve seen the SEC’s overreach continue to expand with the livelihoods and freedoms of musicians, artists and other content creators now under threat in light of the SEC’s move against NFT platform OpenSea. The industry desperately wants clear guidelines for compliance, and instead companies are forced to spend millions of dollars in legal fees to even get off the ground. At the end of the day, this hinders the many companies in crypto trying to build real products. Immutable has been building since 2018 to bring digital ownership to the $110B+ of in-game items sold each year - we are not here to play short-term games. It’s business as usual for our team, products and services. We are confident in our position, in the value digital ownership can bring to 3.1 billion gamers across the world, and in the power of blockchain to create a better internet. If required, we will fight for these rights, and those of our industry, vigorously. In the words of dissenting commissioner Hester Peirce: “Leaving crypto to be addressed in an endless series of misguided and overreaching cases has been and continues to be a consequential mistake”. Until that changes, we will fight for game developers, players, and creators for digital ownership. And we will keep building.