Just yesterday, it was announced that popular digital currency trading platform Coinbase was being sued by the SEC. The news came as a shock to many, and it’s clearly another step in the agency’s agenda to rid the country of crypto for good.
Coinbase Gets Its Way Against the SEC
The good news is that Coinbase doesn’t appear to be taking the abuse sitting down, and it recently got a legal win in its corner. Not long ago, the exchange made headlines when it filed suit against the SEC for not answering a now year-old survey regarding regulatory statutes in the U.S. that could potentially surround crypto.
A federal judge has since ruled in favor of the exchange and says the Securities and Exchange Commission must respond to the survey within a seven-day period and provide the insight the trading company has been seeking since July of 2022.
While this isn’t likely to put any serious dents in the lawsuit the SEC has against Coinbase, it could hold things up for a while. In fact, it may even force the circumstances of the lawsuit to change so that things can be easier on Coinbase in the future. The idea is to garner information from the SEC about how present securities laws would or should apply to assets like BTC and ETH.
Paul Grewal – chief legal officer for Coinbase – said on social media:
Rules of the road, from legislation or rulemaking or both, must come before enforcement actions. That is why we petitioned the SEC for rulemaking nearly a year ago in the first place. We continue to believe that the SEC could not be proceeding with litigation against our industry, like the case filed against us… if the SEC had not already decided to deny our petition for rulemaking… If the SEC’s answer to our petition for rulemaking is ‘no,’ then they are required by law to tell us, because we have the legal right to question that ‘no’ in court, and there are serious questions to be asked.
The SEC has taken on a pattern of “regulation by enforcement” according to many crypto fans and analysts. This pertains to the idea that the SEC has not put out any rules regarding crypto, nor has it worked to clarify present regulations. All it’s done is attack and sue.
Bringing Down Big Names
SEC head Gary Gensler has defended this approach on several occasions. In a recent interview, he said:
The investing public has the benefit of U.S. securities laws. Crypto should be no different, and these platforms, these intermediaries need to come into compliance.
Among the many other crypto firms to fall victim to the SEC’s antics are Kraken – which was forced to part with a $30 million fee and end all staking services – and Binance.