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SEC Reveals Plan to Spin Up Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP Nodes

August 01, 2019

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is looking to hire contractors to run nodes for some of the leading distributed ledgers, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Bitcoin Cash, Stellar, Zcash, EOS and NEO.

The SEC originally issued its request for quotes from contractors in June.

The agency now says it wants to utilize nodes to “support its efforts to monitor risk, improve compliance, and inform Commission policy with respect to digital assets.” 

According to the notice,

a. At a minimum, the subscription shall include the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains.

b. In addition, the subscription shall include as many as possible of the following blockchains: Bitcoin Cash, Stellar, Zcash, EOS, NEO, and XRP Ledger.

c. Subscription must support adding new blockchains, as these gain prominence in the marketplace.

d. The subscription shall source all blockchain data from hosted nodes, rather than providing this data as a secondary source (e.g., via blockchain explorers).

e. The subscription shall include all derivative currencies (tokens) for all provided blockchains.

f. The subscription shall include the full blockchain ledgers, since inception (genesis block) or as available, to present, for all provided blockchains.

The Commission is looking to track a variety of data including “hashing algorithms, hashing power, mining difficulty and rewards, transactions quantity and size, coin supply and blockchain size.”

Although much of the data the SEC is looking for can be easily obtained from free block explorers and other platforms, the SEC indicates it wants to work with contractors that can analyze and audit data as well.

The agency has largely spent much of its time in the cryptoverse determining whether token offerings from various companies qualify as securities. So far, it has determined that Bitcoin is not a security. Commissioner Jay Clayton has also indicated that Ethereum is not a security either.

The notice is an extension of the SEC’s earlier efforts to conduct surveillance on large public blockchains. In January, the SEC published a solicitation bulletin looking for blockchain forensics experts to provide and analyze blockchain data.

“The SEC is seeking information for potential sources to support the goal of acquiring data for the most widely used blockchain ledgers, including the universe of available information and transaction details.”

You can locate and download the pdf called “Attachment 1” which contains details on the SEC’s latest search for blockchain contractors here.

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