Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, recently said that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had requested that the exchange cease trading for all digital assets other than Bitcoin. Prior to suing Coinbase last month for allegedly neglecting to register as a broker, the SEC had asked for this.
They claimed when they got back to us, “We think every asset besides bitcoin is a security. And we asked, “How are you drawing that conclusion?” since that wasn’t how we read the statute. They advised that any assets other than Bitcoin be removed from the list because they would not be explaining it to them.
The SEC expressly designated 13 assets, including SOL, ADA, MATIC, FIL, SAND, AXS, CHZ, FLOW, ICP, NEAR, VGX, DASH, and NEXO as securities in the case against the exchange. The agency further argued that Coinbase had avoided the transparency requirements put in place by Congress for the U.S. securities markets by never registering with the SEC as a broker, national securities exchange, or clearing agency.
At that time, we had no choice but to: Armstrong.
Armstrong claimed in the interview that if Coinbase had complied with these directives, it would have sent the wrong signal. In such a case, unless they were registered with the commission, the majority of American cryptocurrency enterprises would have been considered to be operating illegally. He stated:
Delisting all assets but Bitcoin, which is not what the law says, would have effectively put an end to the US cryptocurrency business, so we really didn’t have an option at that time. It made the decision quite simple. Let’s go to court and hear what the judge rules.
Recently, the sector received some clarification on the topic of security and non-security. The SEC-Ripple case’s court ruled that XRP is not a security. The purchases made on exchanges, the sales made by employees, the distributions to charities and developers, etc., were not tracked. Nevertheless, the federal securities laws were broken by the institutional sales of the tokens, the judge decided. This will now be argued in court once more throughout upcoming sessions. Following Ripple’s partial triumph, a number of industry supporters, including leading solicitors, think the decision will help the Coinbase litigation.
