Bello
Grewal, director of the SECs enforcement division, in a public statement. Coinbase was fully aware of the applicability of the federal securities laws to its business activities, but deliberately refused to follow them.
Like Binance yesterday, Coinbase turned the finger of blame back on the regulator, claiming the SEC has failed to mark out a road to compliance for crypto businesses.The SECs reliance on an enforcementonly approach in the absence of clear rules for the digital asset industry is hurting Americas economic competitiveness, says Paul Grewal, the companys chief legal officer.
Coinbase has demonstrated commitment to compliance, he claims, and will continue to operate as usual while it defends against the complaint.
This tensionover the interpretation of existing securities laws and whether they apply to cryptowill form the center of the case to come,says Noelle Acheson, an independent crypto analyst.Its very much game on, Acheson says.
With the filings against Coinbase and Binance, the SEC has now formally alleged thatseven of the top 15 largest cryptocurrencies are securities.
The upshot of this could be that US investors lose access to popular crypto assets.
We are reaching an end state where if the current regulatory crackdown in the US proceeds unchecked, then youre basically banning most crypto activity in the US, says Omid Malekan, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School and author of ReArchitecting Trust The Curse of History and the Crypto Cure for Money, Markets and Platforms.
The SECslatest complaintdoubles down on itslongstanding assertion that many crypto tokens are simply securities, as defined under existing laws in the US.