Coinbase, largest cryptocurrency exchange, said Friday that the Trump administration has agreed to drop a major lawsuit that would have broad ramifications for the crypto industry. It comes as the new Trump administration has promised to deregulate digital currencies like bitcoin.
In June 2023, Coinbase was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly acting as an unregistered broker. That same month, the SEC brought a lawsuit of a similar nature against Binance, a competitor in other countries, and the company and the regulator agreed last week to put the case on hold. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claimed in its lawsuit that Coinbase illegally made billions of dollars by operating as an exchange, broker, and clearing agency “without having registered any of those functions with the Commission as required by law.” Coinbase stated that the SEC would not impose any fees or fines on the company and would approve the dismissal of its litigation next week. A request for comment was made, but the SEC did not respond. Paul Atkins, Trump’s choice for SEC Chair, is expected to regulate cryptocurrency with much less force than Gary Gensler, who led the agency under the Biden administration. Despite Trump’s earlier dismissal of cryptocurrency as a fraud, the president changed his mind during the campaign and pledged to embrace it. Trump signed an executive order to relax crypto regulations on his third day in office.