The U.S. money police, also known as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has started a big legal fight against a computer code company called Consensys. The SEC says that Consensys did something wrong with its service named MetaMask. They say that MetaMask worked like a money broker without proper permission. They also say that MetaMask’s service, which helps people earn more cryptocurrency, breaks some rules.

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• The SEC is suing Consensys, a company that works with digital money, because of something their service, MetaMask, did.
• The SEC says MetaMask helped with over 36 million digital money trades in four years, and some trades broke the rules.
• Consensys, led by a person who helped start Ethereum, responded to the lawsuit, saying the SEC is against digital money and is trying to control too much.

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SEC Initiates Legal Proceedings Against Ethereum Firm Consensys for Alleged Securities Violations

MetaMask is a tool that many people use when dealing with a kind of digital money called Ethereum. It helps people store their digital money and lets them trade it right from the app through a feature called “Swaps.” This feature is a big part of what the SEC is upset about.

The SEC says that Consensys helped people make over 36 million digital money trades in the past four years and earned money for doing this. At least 5 million of these trades involved special digital money that the SEC thinks should be treated like regular money.

The SEC believes that digital money like Polygon, Mana, Chiliz, Sandbox, and Luna are this particular kind of money. Some of these types of digital money have been in trouble with the SEC because they didn’t follow the rules.

The SEC is also looking into MetaMask’s “staking” feature. This feature lets people put their digital money into the Ethereum system to help it run smoothly and earn interest in return. This feature is helped by Lido and Rocket Pool, two big names in the digital finance world.

A person from Consensys said that they saw this coming. They thought the SEC would say that MetaMask has to register as a money broker. This person also said that the SEC is against digital money and that it is trying to control more than it should.

This fight comes after news that the SEC had stopped considering whether Consensys had any secret dealings with Ethereum. However, they said they might still take action about other things, even though they must mention MetaMask.

Before this, Consensys, led by Joe Lubin, who helped start Ethereum, had sued the SEC to stop the SEC from saying that MetaMask was a money broker or that its staking service broke the rules.

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