Digital asset exchange CrossTower has been selected to join the Crypto Rating Council (CRC) as its newest member.
“We are honored to have been selected to join the CRC and look forward to increasing visibility, promoting standards, and contributing to the safe and orderly growth of the digital asset industry,” stated CrossTower Co-Founder and President Kristin Boggiano.
The CRC is an emerging self-regulatory organization (SRO) that advocates on behalf of responsible and transparency growth of the digital asset sector of finance. The CRC has established a rating method seeking to better clarify when a digital asset is a security and when it may be a non-security crypto.
The organization is member-owned and lists many of the leading names in the digital asset sector. CrossTower joins 11 other industry participants, including Coinbase, Cumberland, Anchorage, and Genesis Global Trading. The CRC’s stated mission is to provide a more systematic U.S. securities law analytical framework for digital assets.
Importantly, CRC members are committed to the responsible growth of digital asset markets and advocate that practical compliance tools can accelerate the growth of the industry.
CrossTower was founded by executives with deep traditional finance experience. Founders have backgrounds at organizations like the NYSE, Merrill Lynch etc. CrossTower currently supports active order books and tight spreads for crypto-to-crypto trading in the five most widely traded digital currencies: Bitcoin, Ether, LiteCoin, USDC, Bitcoin Cash and ZCash. CrossTower has said it plans to introduce additional digital assets as well as new services later this year.
The CRC ratings have a low score of 1 indicating an asset that has few or no characteristics that justify treatment as a security while a score of 5 indicates characteristics consistent with treatment under U.S. securities law. As of today, the Securities and Exchange Commission has not established a bright-line rule as to when a digital asset is a security or utility – or perhaps holds characteristics of both.
Some international jurisdictions have enacted bespoke legislation or regulation to provide bright-line rules for digital assets.
