The New York State Attorney General asked the US Securities and Exchange Commission to openly declare Ethereum’s Ether (ETH) was a security, not a product, under the state’s prosecution of Kucoin in 2023, according to a document revealed by Coinbase Inc. In a trove of agency communication released Wednesday.

Shamiso Maswoswe, head of the Investor Protection Bureau for New York AG, hoped that the federal watchdog would weigh under the court’s dispute by filing a brief of its ETH point of view, according to a document produced through a request for freedom information, requests coin which was filed for SEC.

“We would like to request that SEC submit an amicus in support of the argument that Ether is a security,” she wrote in the request. “Whether or not it will not be available in our case (we have authority over both securities and raw materials) – but I think it would be advantageous for investor protection to get a court to maintain that Ether is a security.”

This and other private crypto-related messages sent and received inside the SEC were made available Wednesday when Coinbase opened online access to several documents as it has received in legal twists with federal authorities. The company’s previous releases of documents included a number of letters from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which backed up the industry’s claims that US bank regulators were actively pushing banks to maintain a distance from crypto.

In New York’s request of 2023, it did not get what it asked when SEC held the agency’s ETH views largely locked. The US Agency had signaled an early notion that ETH was probably an item, it seemed to hover after the protocol switched to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, but SEC eventually fell into an attitude, which means ETH is an item such as Bitcoin (BTC).

Read more: New York Attorney General claims that Ether is a security in the Kucoin Case case

Such wrestling over jurisdiction definitions is at the heart of the crypto industry’s long-standing conflict with US regulators, who have now relieved, where President Donald Trump has put a cryptic tone in his administration, including with his choice of new SEC chairman Paul Atkins. The agency has steadily issued statements about aspects of the sector for digital assets, it is considering outside its securities area.

In New York’s case, the result did not do much because its department of financial services regulates both securities and raw materials under one roof, as opposed to the federal government’s supervisory regime that divides between SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

In December 2023, New York secured a $ 22 million settlement with Kucoin over her lack of registration as an exchange in the state, with state attorney Latitia James noticing that she would “continue to intervene against any company that disgustingly disregards the law and jeopardizes New Yorkers’ savings and investments.”

Read more: Kucoin to pay $ 22m, get out of New York to run out of state suit

Other SEC communication shows a continued interest in the categorization of crypto assets and the US supervisory holes in digital assets.

An e -mail revealed that in 2021 the agency was thinking about Ripple and XRP, and whether blockchain was centralized or decentralized. SEC had begun a long-term legal battle with Ripple the year before when it accused the company of operating illegally in the United States, but this case recently ended Ripple’s benefit-with the company even to get money back from the agency that had been required in a previous fine.