SEC Dismisses Helium Case, Ending Gary Gensler’s Final Act

The SEC has dismissed its lawsuit against Nova Labs, the company behind Helium Network, establishing that the project’s tokens and hotspot devices connected to its blockchain aren’t securities.

With the dismissal, the SEC establishes that “selling hardware and distributing tokens for network growth does not automatically make them securities,” Helium wrote Thursday

The SEC’s decision sets a precedent and potentially removes legal uncertainty over how regulators consider and study similar decentralized physical infrastructure networks.

It also shows a reversal of the SEC’s regulatory approach as the agency’s leadership officially transitions from Gary Gensler to incoming chair Paul Atkins, who the Senate confirmed over a Wednesday evening session with a 52-44 vote along party lines.

Helium received the original lawsuit on January 17. The complaint alleged Nova Labs violated securities laws through unregistered offerings and misled investors about partnerships with companies like Nestlé and Salesforce.

The Helium lawsuit was the last among Gensler’s final enforcement actions as he prepared to leave office.

At the time, Helium co-founder and Nova Labs CEO Amir Haleem characterized the SEC’s move as “the last gasp of a failed crusade against crypto companies in the U.S.”

After the dismissal and as part of their resolution with the regulator, Nova Labs agreed to a modest $200,000 “no admit/no deny” settlement related to its Series D equity financing—far less than the penalties levied in previous crypto enforcement actions.

The case’s resolution joins a wave of SEC reversals under Trump-appointed leadership, including lawsuits and probes previously filed against Binance, Coinbase, and OpenSea.

During the interim period following Gensler’s departure, Acting Chair Mark Uyeda and Commissioner Hester Peirce moved to dismiss nearly all major crypto enforcement actions. 

They also issued statements exempting meme coins, crypto mining, and stablecoins from securities regulation.

Despite the news, the network’s native token, Helium (HNT), was little changed on the day to $2.76, CoinGecko data shows.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair