The Financial Post reports in its Thursday edition that a sharp split between two federal judges in New York has boosted and then dragged down cryptocurrency values in recent weeks, as investors look for clarity on a crucial question: Is crypto a security? A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post says that shares in Coinbase Global Inc., which runs the biggest crypto exchange in the United States, soared 24 per cent on July 13 after U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres, weighing a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit against Ripple Labs, found that the company's XRP token was not a security when sold to individual investors on public exchanges. The SEC had argued that it was -- and an unregistered one at that. Then, on Aug. 1, Coinbase sank as much as 9.5 per cent a day after U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff ruled in an SEC case against Terraform Labs and its co-founder, Do Kwon, that the company's Terra USD token may indeed be a security when sold to retail investors. Neither of the rulings, by judges who sit one floor apart in the Manhattan federal courthouse, has any direct effect on a separate SEC case claiming Coinbase is illegally operating as an unregistered securities exchange.