Coinbase is suing the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The lawsuit follows on a petition for a rulemaking that the company filed with the SEC last summer, requesting the commission draft and approve a rule specific to digital assets. The lawsuit aims to force the agency to provide a yes or no to Coinbase’s ask.
Since that request by Coinbase, the SEC has reopened custody and exchange rules to explicitly say that they apply to digital assets, but has not engaged in drafting a rule specific to digital assets. The agency has also engaged in several enforcement actions against crypto companies, including an investigation into Coinbase.
“From the SEC’s public statements and enforcement activity in the crypto industry, it seems like the SEC has already made up its mind to deny our petition. But they haven’t told the public yet. So the action Coinbase filed today simply asks the court to ask the SEC to share its decision,” the company’s chief legal officer Paul Grewal wrote in a blog post about the filing.
Eugene Scalia, son of former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and former secretary of labor, a cabinet-level position, is one of the outside counsels representing Coinbase in their petition. Scalia, currently a partner at the law firm Gibson Dunn, has won several suits against financial regulators, including a case against the Financial Stability Oversight Council that ended with the revoking of insurance company MetLife’s “too big to fail” regulatory status.
If the SEC declines to make a new rule, Coinbase can file another lawsuit in an attempt to make a federal court force them to do so.
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Source: https://www.theblock.co/post/228047/coinbase-sues-the-sec-for-answer-on-rule-specific-to-digital-assets?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss