Global Courant 2023-04-25 06:08:05
Employees of Coinbase Global Inc, the largest US cryptocurrency exchange, watch their listing appear on the Nasdaq MarketSite jumbotron in New York’s Times Square April 14, 2021.
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
Crypto exchange Coin base filed a lawsuit Monday against the Securities and Exchange Commission, seeking to force the regulator to review its response to a months old petitionn on whether the crypto industry could be regulated using existing SEC frameworks.
The July 2022 petition asked the SEC to “propose and adopt rules for the regulation of securities offered and traded through digitally native methods,” referring to digital assets such as cryptocurrencies.
The SEC has not provided a specific public response to Coinbase’s petition, but has been aggressively ramping up enforcement actions and warnings against crypto exchanges, including Coinbase, in recent months.
“From the SEC’s public statements and the crypto industry’s enforcement activities, it seems that the SEC has already decided to deny our petition. But they have not yet notified the public. So the action Coinbase took today simply asks the court to ask the SEC to share its decision,” Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer said in a blog post.
Since January, the SEC has taken action against crypto exchanges Bittrex & Gemini, crypto lender Genesis and a number of individual actors accused of manipulating crypto assets, including crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun and disgraced Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon.
The move is Coinbase’s first formal salvo against the regulator, just over a month after it was warned by the SEC about pending legal action via a Wells notice.
“Coinbase does not take litigation lightly, especially when it comes to one of our regulators. Regulatory clarity is overdue for our industry,” Grewal said in the blog post. “Yet Coinbase and other crypto companies face potential regulatory enforcement action from the SEC, even though we have not been told how the SEC believes the law applies to our company.”
The SEC did not immediately return a request for comment.
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