Before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Coinbase in June, it asked it to halt trading in all types of cryptocurrencies except bitcoin. reported The Financial Times quoted Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on Monday.
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“At that point we really didn’t have a choice. The delisting of all assets except Bitcoins, which by the way is illegal, would effectively mean the end of the crypto industry in the United States, – said Armstrong. — That made the choice easy for us… Let’s go to court and find out what the court thinks about it.”. If Coinbase agreed to the regulator’s request, it would set a precedent that would result in the vast majority of US firms in the cryptocurrency sector being banned for not registering with the SEC.
The SEC accused NASDAQ-listed company Coinbase of illegal activities for failing to register as a broker. The commission also alleged in the lawsuit that Coinbase traded at least 13 crypto assets that should have been registered with Coinbase, including tokens such as Solana, Cardano, and Polygon. However, the SEC’s request to remove all tokens with more than 200 names from Coinbase – with the exception of Bitcoin – suggests that the commission would like greater powers in the crypto industry. At the same time, the list of crypto assets identified as securities in the lawsuit does not include Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency in terms of trading volume. Earlier, SEC chief Gary Gensler stated that most cryptocurrencies, with the exception of Bitcoin, are securities. However, the SEC claims that its legal team did not conduct a formal investigation “to companies about delisting cryptoassets”.
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