The largest U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange said Friday that the Securities and Exchange Commission would drop its lawsuit against it, a signal that the Trump administration plans to take a friendlier approach to the broader crypto industry. <\/p>\n
In a release it titled \u2018Righting a major wrong,\u2019 the exchange, Coinbase, said SEC staff had agreed in principle to dismiss a suit filed during the Biden administration. The suit accused Coinbase of acting as an unregistered securities broker. <\/p>\n
The agency must still vote to formally drop the suit. <\/p>\n
A representative for the SEC declined to comment on Coinbase\u2019s announcement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018I think it is a really important signal that a small group of activists in the prior administration who tried to unlawfully attack this industry \u2014 we are able to turn page on that and finally get regulatory clarity in America,\u2019 Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in an interview on CNBC on Friday morning. <\/p>\n
Coinbase shares were up 5% in premarket trading. Bitcoin prices were up 1%. <\/p>\n
The move to drop the suit would serve to make good on President Donald Trump\u2019s campaign commitment to roll back the strict enforcement of the crypto industry that occurred under then-President Joe Biden. Trump has promised to make the United States the \u2018crypto capital of the world,\u2019 and has launched his own meme coin.<\/p>\n
In its original suit, the SEC said Coinbase\u2019s alleged actions were depriving investors of \u2018critical protections, including rulebooks that prevent fraud and manipulation, proper disclosure, safeguards against conflicts of interest, and routine inspection by the SEC.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cYou simply can\u2019t ignore the rules because you don\u2019t like them or because you\u2019d prefer different ones: the consequences for the investing public are far too great,\u201d Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the SEC\u2019s Division of Enforcement, said at the time.<\/p>\n
To date, the SEC has not categorized bitcoin as a security. The crypto industry has long complained that, under former Chair Gary Gensler, the agency took an overly critical posture toward the industry while failing to provide clear \u2018rules of the road\u2019 and work with it to develop a means for it to operate legally. <\/p>\n
Lawsuits against two other exchanges, Binance and Kraken, are still pending. <\/p>\n
\u2018We tried to \u2018come in and register\u2019 but it turned out it was a fake offer, as every crypto company discovered,\u2019 Armstrong wrote in a separate post on X on Friday, referring to the Biden administration\u2019s previous actions concerning the crypto industry. <\/p>\n
\u2018Regulators are supposed to enforce the law, but they can\u2019t make up new laws on the spot if they don\u2019t like the current ones, or weaponize a lack of clarity in the law.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The largest U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange said Friday that the Securities and Exchange Commission would drop…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6799,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}