XRP Community Member Claims Coin Center Took Payments From Ethereum Foundation To Discredit Other Projects.
The organization received a $500,000 grant from the Ethereum Foundation in 2021.
Bill Morgan, a pro-XRP Australian lawyer, has alleged that the Ethereum Foundation’s grant to nonprofit research and crypto advocacy organization Coin Center was “for past services calling out other tokens as securities.”
Morgan made this claim in a two-part Twitter thread today, citing an excerpt from a Coin Center blog post in 2016 to answer whether Bitcoin is a security. As highlighted by Morgan, the author expresses that Ethereum is not a security because of its application-based platform. Conversely, the article states that projects with “heavily marketed pre-sales or sales of pre-mined cryptocurrencies with a small and non-diverse mining and developer community when the facts indicate that profits come primarily from the efforts of this discrete and profit-motivated group” pass the Howey Test.
Starting with this from its early 2016 document. /2 pic.twitter.com/ieh5csASJP
— bill morgan (@Belisarius2020) March 25, 2023
It is unclear if the Australian lawyer perceives this statement as a jab at XRP. For context, David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto began the development of the XRP Ledger in 2011 and launched it with the native token XRP in 2012. Soon, the trio was joined by Chris Larsen and started the company NewCoin which eventually became Ripple. Notably, the founders gifted 80 billion of the initial 100 billion XRP supply to the for-profit company that sold the pre-mined crypto.
While Ethereum also had a pre-sale in 2014, Coin Center, in a 2018 blog post, argues that while the pre-sale may fit the bill of a security offering, the asset itself in its current state is not a security due to its usefulness.
Coin Center raised money in one funding round in 2017, where Consensys, Ripple, Abra, Bitso, and ShapeShift are named as investors raising $1 million for the organization, per Crunchbase data. In addition, it received a $500,000 grant from the Ethereum Foundation in 2021.
Notably, the latest accusations come as Coin Center’s Neeraj K. Agrawal took a jab at Ripple for donating $5 million to Greenpeace only to get “a cool statue that associates bitcoin with nuclear power.” Agrawal would later clarify that this donation came from Ripple’s Executive Chairman, Chris Larsen, and not Ripple.
“We have not labeled any projects as securities,” Coin Center wrote in response to requests for comment. “Bill tweeted a list of factors that a regulator might want to consider when analyzing a particular token. You may want to ask him if he thinks XRP fits the highlighted portion.”
As reported by The Crypto Basic last year, Larsen had donated $5 million to Greenpeace’s “Change the Code, Not the Climate” campaign, which sought to pressure Bitcoin miners and core developers to change Bitcoin’s consensus model in light of environmental concerns. On Thursday, the group unveiled an art piece dubbed “Skull of Satoshi” to further draw attention to the perceived harms of Bitcoin mining. However, the statue has not gotten the reception Greenpeace aimed for, as Bitcoiners love it.
Bitcoiners love the statue
Greenpeace don’t commit a massive self own challenge (impossible)
— nic ? carter ?♂️? (@nic__carter) March 24, 2023
Updated to include comments from Coin Center.
Disclaimer: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic’s opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.
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