The United States Stock Exchange and Securities Commission will soon vote in a negotiated agreement with Coinbase to completely eliminate the legal search for the Cryptography Exchange Agency, according to the company’s main lawyer.
Although the SEC has been making almost daily movements to reverse past positions in digital assets, the pending vote would mark a decisive moment that could begin a series of legal domino to free other cryptographic businesses from application actions. Because the agreement between the Coinbase personnel and the SEC assumes a dismissal of the case “with prejudice,” said the legal director of Coinbase, Paul Grewal, the accusations of the value violation regulator would be closed permanently.
“It’s a great day for Coinbase, yes, but it’s also a great day for cryptography in the United States,” Grewal said in an interview with Coindesk. “We have all the expectations, based on representations that have been made to us, that the approval will come, and with that, the dismissal will be presented.”
He reformulated it in simpler terms: “We won; they lose.”
And the CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, said in a video posted on Friday that “this is an important sign about where things are going.”
When the SEC was for the first time after Coinbase, the most prominent of the Cryptographic platforms based in the US. The SEC supposed Coinbase violated the federal law by not registering as a compensation house, corridor or negotiation place, based on the opinion of the agency of the so -called Howey test that determines whether an asset is a security. The company chose to combat accusations in a federal court, and that legal shock had been fierce, more recently when seeing a judge to the coinbase effort to raise an appeal of the central question in dispute: are these tokens really being values under the Jurisdiction of the SEC? ?
The industry had long expected to wait for the courts to eventually even cryptographic values. But it is likely that the surrender of the SC in this dispute echoes in other cases, which would put the last word on the legal definition in the hands of Congress.
Therefore, the vote of the commission could launch the main approach of the industry towards the lobbying instead of legal disputes.
The meet meetings of the SEC, currently composed of interim president Mark Uyeda, Republican Commissioner Hester Peirce and the Democratic commission week. Croww has been a vocal skeptic of the digital asset industry and compliance, so it is not clear if he would be willing to sign the dismissal.
A SEC spokesman declined to comment on the agreement revealed by Coinbase.
Allied sec
Uyeda and Peirce, who was appointed head of the new Crypto Task Force of the agency, had been sympathizing for a long time with the affirmation of the digital asset industry that the SEC was being poorly handled by the SEC. Once Donald Trump swore as president, he gave the agency’s deck to Uyeda interim, and Uyeda began to make quick movements to change his course on cryptography. This is the last and, assuming a vote of itself, possibly the most significant of the changes so far.
Finally, former Commission Paul Atkins will take charge after ensuring a Senate confirmation. But Uyeda and Peirce served Atkins as advice during their mandate in the SEC, so ATKINS is expected to follow the same path in the cryptography that Uyeda is already cleaning.
Earlier this week, the agency changed its application unit, once focused on cryptography, to a broader responsibility on “emerging technologies”, which suggests a withdrawal of the era of great attention in cases of cryptography . He also withdrew his appeal in the fight to defend his effort to force a wide strip of cryptographic activity to his recent rule to expand the definition of what makes a “distributor” supervision of the SEC.
In another case of Marquesina crypto, the regulator recently asked to reach a pause in the Binance application dispute. These accusations of violations of the Securities Law overlap to some extent with the complaint against Coinbase, although Binance’s demand also included accusations of fraud and conflicts of interest.
The SEC had indicated in a similar way last week that something was brewing with Coinbase when it requested a delay in judicial procedures, which suggests that the negotiations were undergoing a resolution and pointing out that the new cryptographic working group of the agency would help the application team “
“The unilateral surrender of the SEC in its demand against Coinbase is a historical error that endangers investors, markets and financial stability,” said Dennis Kelleher, CEO of Better Markets, a Washington -based defense group that regularly speaks about cryptographic hazards. “The SEC used to enforce the law without fear or favor, but is now favoring the cryptographic industry and fears the multimillionaire king that publicly belittle the agency.”
The vote
In the next few days, the lawyers of the entire industry will observe the Coinbase vote of the SEC, and then the judge’s response in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. If the SEC formally retreces the accusations of the values not registered incorrectly, you will have to do the same in any similar case.
“I hope that this case will be dismissed, offer a template so that other cases are also resolved,” Grewal said. “And if that were the case, we would be delighted, because we felt that the entire Gary Gensler campaign against cryptography was a distortion, frankly, an abuse, of legal process.”
As the agency continues to solve past actions, it is indicated that the future intention is to focus on fraud on compliance disagreements. And Uyeda said as recently as Thursday that the new SEC working group will guide its application.
“An approach to this working group will be to ensure that we display the execution resources trially,” he said at an event in Washington.
Grewal acknowledged that the following priority quickly becomes the legislation of the United States that can establish clear regulations at the federal level. To that end, Coinbase has been among the main cryptographic companies that deepen the political sphere, deploying dozens of millions of dollars in the 2024 elections (through the Fireshake PAC) to ensure a more friendly congress. One in 10 members of this Congress was promoted by Fireshake ads in their campaigns last year.
“We have seen Congress announce its commitment to legislation from the first 100 days,” Grewal said. “So we are very anxious, with this cloud now raised, to focus all our attention on the approval of the legislation in the structure of the market and the stables. That is, frankly, very delayed.”
Update (February 21, 2025, 13:11 UTC): Add application to SD to make comments.
Update (February 21, 2025, 15:06 UTC): Add the SEC response.
Update (February 21, 2025, 15:51 UTC): Add comments from Dennis Kelleher, Better Markets CEO.
Update (February 21, 2025, 15:55 UTC): Add an appointment and link to the CEO video Brian Armstrong.
