The Chamber of Digital Commerce has filed an amicus cursory in the ongoing court case between encrypted messenger service Telegram and the United States Securities Exchange Committee (SEC).

Filed on January. 21, the document was authored by Lilya Tessler, a partner and the New York head of Sidley Austin LLP, counsel to the Bedchamber.

In the amicus brief — a legal certificate that allows a non-litigant to submit its expertise or opinion in a case — the Sleeping accommodation makes a number of arguments regarding how the U.S. Commune Courtroom for the Southern District of New York should consider digital assets.

The Chamber is a non-profit trade association established in 2022 which aims to promote the adoption of digital assets and blockchain-based applied science. Equally part of its mission, the Bedchamber established major blockchain and crypto-related advocacy groups including the Blockchain Alliance and the Token Alliance.

Bedroom urges for clarity regarding investment contracts

Given its supportive stance on blockchain applied science, the Bedroom emphasized that information technology is non trying to bear witness whether Telegram'south $1.7 billion Gram token sale was a securities transaction. Instead, the merchandise association aims to ensure that in that location is enough clarity around regulations applying to digital avails:

"Although the Chamber does non accept a view on whether the offer and sale of Grams is a securities transaction, the Sleeping room has an interest in ensuring that the legal framework applied to digital assets underlying an investment contract is clear and consistent."

As such, the Bedroom has urged the Court to distinguish the term of digital nugget, which is the subject area of an investment contract, from the securities transaction associated with it. The clan stated that this requires 2 separate analyses including whether in that location is an investment contract that is offered in a securities transaction and whether the field of study of the investment contract is a article that can be sold in a traditional commercial transaction.

The question of whether a token auction constitutes an investment contract — and therefore a securities offering — has been at the center of the SEC's case against Telegram. Earlier this calendar month, Telegram stated that Gram does non found an investment production and that investors should not look profits for buying and holding the token.

The Chamber says that not all digital assets should exist regulated as securities

In the certificate, the Bedroom also states that non all digital avails should be regulated every bit securities just because they are based on blockchain technology:

"We further respectfully asking that the Court affirm that a digital asset is non a security solely past virtue of beingness in digital form or recorded in a blockchain database."

Additionally, it noted that, while digital asset investors should be afforded full protections of securities laws, disclosures required by the securities laws "serve little purpose with respect to commercial transactions in the digital assets themselves."

Moreover, the brief too stresses that non all digital asset-related transactions require the protection of securities laws, noting that at that place are a number of related regulators other than the SEC. The Chamber further requested the Courtroom to consider multiple regulatory regimes while making its decision in SEC vs Telegram instance:

"Depending on the relevant activity, other regulatory regimes exist to protect purchasers or counterparties. For example, fraud and market manipulation in sure digital asset transactions (depending on the facts and circumstances) is subject to CFTC enforcement authority. Other activities involving digital assets may as well be subject field to the Bank Secrecy Act, federal and state consumer protection laws, state coin transmitter licensing laws, and state laws specific to virtual currency transactions, such as New York'southward Virtual Currency Business Activity law."

As Cointelegrpah reported, Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov recently gave an eighteen-hr long videotaped deposition for the courtroom in Dubai. Throughout the degradation, SEC official Jorge Tenreiro questioned Durov extensively on the company's expenses and funding used to set the house.