While Coinbase’s problems with the SEC have flared up just in the past week, they represent the exact scenario that has been keeping crypto executives up at night for far longer. In fact, Coinbase spokeswoman Lisa Johnson told me the company had been working for several months on the lengthy petition it filed with the agency last Thursday to formulate new rules pertaining to digital assets — an effort, in part, to head off charges of listing unregistered securities. It was an unfortunate coincidence, then, that the SEC unveiled a complaint the same day implicitly accusing the company of doing just. Johnson said Coinbase hadn’t been aware of the SEC’s impending complaint. And in the months leading up to the petition, executives had been howling for more explicit SEC guidance, with the threat looming that the federal government would conclude much of the industry amounted to trafficking unregistered securities.
Full story : Crypto’s nightmare scenario is here.
