Crypto investor and YouTuber Ian Balina broke U.S. securities laws when he offered and sold SPRK tokens, a Texas district court ruled on Wednesday. 

The judge said that securities laws applied to Balina and that SPRK tokens met the criteria of the Howey Test, a 1946 U.S. Supreme Court case frequently cited by the SEC in cases involving crypto, to determine if an asset qualifies as an investment contract and, therefore, a security.

"The Court holds as a matter of law that U.S. securities laws apply to Balina’s conduct and that the SPRK tokens are securities," the judge concluded.

Balina was charged in September 2022 over his involvement with an unregistered initial coin offering (ICO). The SEC's allegations center around the ICO for Sparkster, which was pitched as a "no-code" …