Mining pools, which combine the computational resources of multiple miners, do not constitute securities transactions under federal securities laws, as clarified by the SEC in its statement that proof-of-work mining isn't a security

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The SEC also addressed mining pools where they join pools to combine their processing power and share rewards. Like mining itself, mining pools do not have an expectation of profits, the SEC said.

The statement, published by the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, declared that both solo proof-of-work crypto mining and pooled proof-of-work crypto mining do not meet the definition of a securities transaction under the Howey Test — the legal framework used to determine whether a transaction represents an investment contract — because they are “not undertaken with a reasonable expectation of profits to be derived from the entrepreneurial or managerial efforts of others.”