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The Courts

SEC Sues Coinbase Over Exchange and Staking Programs (cnbc.com) 31

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
The Securities and Exchange Commission sued crypto exchange Coinbase in New York federal court on Tuesday morning, alleging that the company was acting as an unregistered broker and exchange and demanding that the company be "permanently restrained and enjoined" from continuing to do so. From a report: Coinbase's flagship prime brokerage, exchange and staking programs violate securities laws, the regulator alleged in its complaint. The company "has for years defied the regulatory structures and evaded the disclosure requirements" of U.S. securities law. The SEC has alleged that at least 13 crypto assets available to Coinbase customers were considered "crypto asset securities" by the regulator. Those assets include Solana's SOL token, Cardano's token and Protocol Labs' Filecoin token. "We allege that Coinbase, despite being subject to the securities laws, commingled and unlawfully offered exchange, broker-dealer, and clearinghouse functions," said SEC chair Gary Gensler said in a statement.
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SEC Sues Coinbase Over Exchange and Staking Programs More

SEC Sues Coinbase Over Exchange and Staking Programs

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  • Low UID here (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    First Post!

  • It can't be as good as the filed Binance brief (Score:3)

    by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday June 06, 2023 @09:04AM (#63580049) Homepage

    ii. Zhao and Binance Developed a Plan to Evade U.S. Legal Scrutiny While Continuing to Profit from U.S. Investors.

    110. Zhao and Binance understood that they were operating the Binance.com Platform
    in violation of numerous U.S. laws, including the federal securities laws, and that these ongoing
    violations presented existential risks to their business.

    111. As Binance’s CCO bluntly admitted to another Binance compliance officer in
    December 2018, “we are operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.”
    (Emphasis added.)

    Link [sec.gov].

  • This is the SEC's press release. [sec.gov]

    The SEC alleges that, since 2019, Coinbase has been engaging in an unregistered securities offering through its staking-as-a-service program, which allows customers to earn profits from the âoeproof of stakeâ mechanisms of certain blockchains and Coinbaseâ(TM)s efforts.

    So... 4 years.

    "You simply canâ(TM)t ignore the rules because you donâ(TM)t like them or because youâ(TM)d prefer different ones: the consequences for the investing public are far too great,â said Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the SECâ(TM)s Division of Enforcement. "As alleged in our complaint, Coinbase was fully aware of the applicability of the federal securities laws to its business activities, but deliberately refused to follow them. While Coinbaseâ(TM)s calculated decisions may have allowed it to earn billions, itâ(TM)s done so at the expense of investors by depriving them of the protections to which they are entitled. Todayâ(TM)s action seeks to hold Coinbase accountable for its choices.â

    Yea, I see it was a multi-state task force the bottom, and all that shit takes time to coordinate. But, how but some injunctions? The SEC is so slow to act, and on so little, that for the most part fraud goes unchecked - especially until it's far too late for the people scammed.

    There were organizations trying to get this shit added to 401Ks, FFS.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) *

      Read the Coinbase v. SEC lawsuit to answer half your question.

      That SPOX is lying. SEC refused rulemaking clarity and wants to use /Chevron/ to implement ex-post facto law through administrative rulemaking.

      The Maine fisheries case at SCOTUS might settle this for good. The waterways case unanimously restricted such power so that's the other half of 'why-now'.

      The Legislature may make laws about this if it so choses and they're consistent with the relevant Constitutions.

      None of us should want unelected bureaucr

      • these are run of the mill unregistered securities running ponzi schemes. It's exactly what those "unelected bureaucrats" are there for. Do you back the blue? That's all this is. Law enforcement.

        One man's bureaucrat is another man's police officer. Folks seem to get upset when they hear an IRS agent might have a gun, but personally I don't want actual cops to enforce these laws. There's no need. But I *do* want the laws enforced. And that means somebody has to do it. Calling them "bureaucrats" is just a

        • Folks seem to get upset when they hear an IRS agent might have a gun

          I actually bought a Sig Sauer P229 "law enforcement edition" from an ex-Treasury agent that has the "for law enforcement only" stamp in the bottom of the 13-round magazines because it was produced during the assault weapons ban. Only time it was used: re-qualification on the range, then immediately cleaned.

          I'm fine with them carrying guns, if someone is going to act like an asshole and threaten them with harm for just doing their job as a civil servant.

          • For the IRS it's agents that go out in the field and confront tax dodgers. They're armed because most Americans are armed and going out and talking to somebody who owes back taxes and isn't a wealthy businessman and probably isn't going to pay them after he pulls in a few favors is dangerous work. You're basically a repo Man who has to talk to the guy who owes money

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 )

        >Read the Coinbase v. SEC lawsuit to answer half your question.
        >
        >That SPOX is lying. SEC refused rulemaking clarity and wants to use /Chevron/ to implement ex-post facto law through administrative rulemaking.

        This.
        Coinbase : Tell us what the rules are!
        SEC : No
        SEC : We are suing you for breaking the rules that we refused to describe to you.

        • Coinbase: Hey SEC can we sell these things that look a lot like securities?
          SEC: We will not comment.
          Coinbase: Ok, were going to do this thing that might be illegal and send us to jail because this will make us a lot of money WHeeeeee!
          SEC: We're going to send you to jail.
          Coinbase: but you didn't tell us the the thing we thought might be illegal was illegal and we did it anyways because it made us lots of money.
          • I don't have the time to read the whole thing, but the SEC cannot decide what kind of business you are running, if what you say accurately depicts what happened. A business must have good lawyers who identify the regulations that apply to the transactions the company is performing. Lack of comment from the SEC does not absolve the business from its responsibilities. This is an awful lot like the Trump "charity" in New York. When Trump blurted that he accepts money from others, the organization was immediate
          • Staking is a person performing a service of validating the correctness of the blockchain transactions, and thus maintaining the cryptocurrency platform's essential functioning.
            For that service, the person is paid;
            Staking is employment or service-contracting, not investing in a security FFS.

            Gary Gensler is just an angry man on a rampage because there's a new thing he can't control.
    • There's two factions. First, there's the guys trying to protect "innovation". If you're being realistic they were seeing if they and their buddies on Wall Street could profit from it and they decided they couldn't.

      These guy were called out a few times about not regulating and that's what they said.

      Second, there's the guys who wanted to go after these crooks. But without everybody on their side they needed iron clad cases. So what they did was go after small fish who couldn't buy off Senators first,

    • 4 years is quick for this kind of thing, really. Consider:

      A. there is no direct precedent for any of this
      B. government is usually incredibly slow to react to technological changes in the best of scenarios
      C. there was questionable appetite for the SEC to go after any of these guys for the first 2 years due to who was sitting in the White House, and SEC higher-ups are gonna look out for themselves before they look out for investors.
      D. lawyers take their time with anything that is not a slam dunk, as they don

  • So if everything digital that holds value is a security and our future life will be increasingly digital. All our future possessions will be a security. The SEC as an extension of the state demands total control over all of this. Your life will not be your own, everything you have can be disowned by a press of a button. For sure our governments in their ultimate wisdom will never abuse such power /s.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 )

      Nobody says that everything digital the holds value is a security. The rest of your rant is meaningless.

    • I'm pretty sure that the only thing being defined as a security, are things that are being treated as, and traded as securities. You know, crypto-currencies that have fluctuating values at any given point of time based on market movements and future-value speculation.

      So basically your hyperbole is useless.

    • That's not what this is as others have said, but damn it would come in handy to completely control nutballs like you almost worth actually doing it, but yada yada yada it would actually suck for decent people especially once a despot was elected president...

    • web3 is a sham. You will not be living life on the blockchain.

      You want to talk about 'your life is not your own'? Then you need to think about how Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and all of the other private spy services work.

  • So games next? (Score:3)

    by bumblebees ( 1262534 ) on Tuesday June 06, 2023 @11:15AM (#63580461)
    That 10$ rifle in some game should be regulated then also i guess...
    • And I'm sure the exchange lobby is salivating. Just wait there will be NASDAQ Crypto exchange soon. They feel left out and lobbyist cried tears of dollars to the politician's.
  • Direct quote from them last April:
    Regulatory clarity is overdue for our industry. Yet Coinbase and other crypto companies are facing potential regulatory enforcement actions from the SEC, even though we have not been told how the SEC believes the law applies to our business. The rulemaking process is a critical step to giving the public notice about what activities they can and cannot engage in. So until the crypto industry gets that clarity, we will continue to take every step available to us to seek it,

  • Maybe it is for the best for the courts to decide. An opportunity for an independent party to hear both sides seems appropriate.

  • Leaving other jurisdictions like the UK and Singapore to take the lead.

    There, fixed that article headline for you.

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