In the US, NFT tokens can be equated to securities

Alma Angotti, a former lawyer at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), believes that the case against a former OpenSea employee may end with the recognition of NFTs as securities.

Nate Chastain was arrested on Wednesday. According to the prosecutor’s office of the Southern District of New York, he is accused of «wire fraud and money laundering as part of an insider trading scheme.» As TechCrunch notes, the term «insider trading» is usually used in relation to stocks and other securities, not cryptocurrencies.

Angotti, who has experience working for agencies such as the SEC, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), believes that the possibility of recognizing NFTs as securities is quite real: «They can easily be recognized as securities under the Howey test. If you buy NFTs with the expectation of value growth, it is not very different from securities.»

The Howey test is used in American practice to determine whether a financial instrument falls within the definition of a security or not. To do so, several conditions must be met, including the presence of investment and expectations of profit from the actions of third parties.