It is reported that the digital currency exchange Kraken is conducting an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States, mainly because of whether it has violated the requirements of the relevant securities public offering.

According to Bloomberg News on Feb. 8, the investigation involved a product that Kraken offered to U. S. users. A representative of a person familiar with the matter said the investigation was in its final stages and an agreement could be reached in the next few days.

At present, however, it is not clear what IPO has been checked by securities regulators.

When asked about the so-called investigation, a spokesman for SEC told Cointelegraph, "SEC will not post or post about the possibility of investigation."

Kraken didn't immediately respond to a media request for comment.

Gensler made it clear last December that her main goal of controlling login passwords in 2023 is to make access to password exchanges and borrowing platforms compliant, he said. This can be achieved by registering companies with SEC or through law enforcement actions.

KrakenCEO Dave Ripley said in September that he did not see the need to register Kraken as an SEC exchange because he did not provide securities, adding that "there are no listed securities that everyone is interested in in the market."

But Gamo Gensler, the current chairman of SEC, has repeatedly said that in his view most of the digital currencies other than BTC (BTC) are securities.

However, SEC recently recognized at the appeal hearing in the LBRY v. SEC case on January 30 that the sale of LBRY personal credit (LBC) in the secondary market did not constitute a security, and the previous presiding judge was persuaded by the arguments of John Deaton, the master, who stressed that in similar cases, the court had never regarded call options as securities.

Regulators often refer to the "Howie Test" to determine what is meant by securities. The name comes from SEC v. Howey in 1946, which set a precedent for transactions called securities in the United States.

The court felt that a deal was eligible for an investment agreement, so it was called a loan guarantee, that is, an investment in an ordinary company whose profit was based entirely on the work of others.