Bitcoin may come out unscathed in the cryptocurrency regulatory crackdown, said a venture capitalist who invests in blockchain-enabled companies.
Blockchain is the online ledger technology underlying bitcoin and other digital coins.
"Along a spectrum, bitcoin is the furthest away from being a security from all of the crypto assets, in my opinion," Spencer Bogart, a partner at Blockchain Capital, told CNBC on "Fast Money" on Thursday. "Therefore it is the least likely to come under a regulatory crackdown."
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday released a statement saying digital assets that are considered securities must register with the agency.
The SEC uses the so-called Howey Test, or a test created by the Supreme Court, to determine which transactions are considered a security investment, Bogart said. To qualify as a security, investors must "contribute money to a common enterprise with the expectation of profit," primarily from the "efforts of others," he explained.
"In the case of bitcoin, that just never has been the case," Bogart argued. "There was nobody that launched bitcoin and said ... 'I'm going to sell you 20 percent of the coins for a specific price.'"
"The software was launched into the world. People started mining it, and it grew organically," he added. "There is no central enterprise that receives the money that investors pay for bitcoin and deploy."