- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Coinbase to move forward, but dismissed one of the regulator’s charges against the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States
- A U.S. district judge partially granted Coinbase’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that accused the company of flouting its rules.
- The exchange was prepared for the ruling and will continue to fight the SEC’s claims.
Litigation may proceed
A federal judge in Manhattan said Wednesday that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against Coinbase can move forward, but dismissed one of the regulator’s charges against the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange. U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla partially granted Coinbase’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that accused the company of flouting its rules.
While the decision was a partial victory for Coinbase in a long and expensive court battle, it largely upheld the SEC’s approach to cryptocurrencies and agreed with other judges who sided with the regulator.
Prepare for the verdict
Shares of Coinbase were down about 1.5% in afternoon trading.
Coinbase chief legal Officer Paul Grewal said in a social media post on X that the exchange was prepared for the ruling and would continue to fight the SEC’s claims.
“We remain confident in our legal arguments and we look forward to proving us right,” he said. An SEC spokesperson said the agency is “pleased that another court has confirmed that while the term ‘cryptocurrency’ may be relatively new, the framework that courts have used to identify securities for nearly 80 years still applies.” “We will continue to protect investors from risks in the crypto market, where securities laws are implicated, as they are here,” the spokesperson said.
Relying on the U.S. Supreme Court ruling
Coinbase said in June that it facilitated trading of at least 13 crypto tokens that should have been registered as securities and was operating illegally as a national securities exchange, broker and clearing house without registering with regulators. Failla allowed most of the lawsuit to proceed, but dismissed the SEC’s claim that Coinbase acted as an unregistered broker through its wallet app.
The case against the world’s largest publicly traded cryptocurrency exchange is a high-water mark in regulators’ campaign to apply U.S. securities laws to digital asset firms. To do so, the SEC relies heavily on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that sets the test for when an investment constitutes a security. One key is whether the reward “comes solely from the efforts of others.”
