Coinbase-Led Crypto Ratings Council Plans Transparency Boost as New Members Join

The Crypto Ratings Council, the Coinbase-led organization hoping to create a standard for assessing whether different cryptocurrencies are securities under U.S. law, is adding new members.

The new members bolster the level of technical and legal information that the group can utilize, said Juan Suarez, a VP and general counsel at Coinbase working with the CRC.Suarez told CoinDesk in a phone call that every CRC member reviews the ratings before they are made public, and each asset is listed by at least one of the group.

Five new assets were rated Thursday: cosmos and livepeer have both received a 3.75 score, while dash and horizen received 1s and ethereum classic received a 2.In addition, the CRC will refine the explanations on its current list, Suarez said.

The ratings themselves won't change but the reasoning behind whether each asset resembles a security will be condensed.

While its ratings indicate the CRC's confidence that a particular asset resembles - or doesn't resemble - a security, the group is not affiliated with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which to date has only stated that bitcoin and ethereum are not securities.

As part of its 2020 roadmap, the CRC plans to share details of the actual framework it uses to arrive at its evaluations.

Suarez said the group plans to continue providing its analysis for any given asset, but releasing the broader framework may help the industry.

The current lack of transparency around how assets are evaluated was one major criticism of the CRC when the group was first unveiled.

There's also work afoot to address questions raised by current CRC members about the framework.

The end goal, according to Suarez, is to help crypto startups more easily comply with existing securities law.