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Coinbase issued Wells notice by SEC

reuters.com

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Re: Coinbase issued Wells notice by SEC

#131

Post by cdiddy2 »

overthrow wrote: post #19
arcticbull wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, the answer is all of them except Bitcoin. I think all parties to this Wells-based conversation know that and Coinbase is just posturing for the court of public opinion. [edit] I should say, Coinbase has been preparing for this forever. They acquired a broker-dealer license years ago, back in 2018. [1] [1] https://brokercheck.finra.org/firm/summary/151143

Yep, Gensler has outright said that “everything else other than bitcoin is a security.”[1] There's no chance Coinbase isn't aware of this. I don't know what they hope to accomplish by pretending otherwise. [1]: https://cryptoslate.com/sec-chair-gensler-confirms-everythin...

The CFTC disagrees with that stance https://decrypt.co/123032/cftc-chair-says-ethereum-is-a-comm...

Re: Coinbase issued Wells notice by SEC

#132

Post by fsckboy »

nonethewiser wrote: post #59
paulpauper wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm her fund has gotten totally clobbered since early 2021. If she were truly privy to insider info, why would her fund do so bad? Or put it another way, after being wrong so often, maybe she is bound to get something right by chance (stopped clock theorem)?

> Hmm her fund has gotten totally clobbered since early 2021. If she were truly privy to insider info, why would her fund do so bad? The claim is she knew about this information based off the timing of the trade. It’s not evidence but it’s certainly suspicious. It does not follow that she would necessarily know enough other information to perform well. That’s a much higher bar, especially when tech has been pretty de…

as a claim, it has no merit; it's a raised eyebrow.

Re: Coinbase issued Wells notice by SEC

#133

Post by rtpg »

Taek wrote: post #101
rtpg wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to guess, the SEC is actually saying "you are offering many products, and _way too many of them_ are securities. We will not list them all because it would be way too much work. We will not list one because we don't want you to overfit on the example. We want you to actually do the analysis across all of your products". I have to imagine the SEC and Coinbase are in fact talking directly on a more off the rec…

The entire crypto industry has spent billions of dollars on compliance and the effective opinion of all the lawyers is "there's not enough guidance, anything you do that touches a token carries potential liability, and the SEC is refusing to lay down any sort of rules for what a compliant token looks like" Coinbase has plenty of lawyers and legal budget and would happily do an analysis if sufficient guidance actually…

You seem to know more about this, so I'm wondering: is "most tokens are really securities, but the way tokens work means you couldn't really make them compliant securities in the same way that my paper plane is a plane but I won't get FAA approval to sell it to American Airlines" a way of envisioning the world on this? Or are 'compliant securities' theoretically a possible thing in some vision of the world where compliance means something?

Re: Coinbase issued Wells notice by SEC

#134

Post by peyton »

rtpg wrote: post #133
Taek wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire crypto industry has spent billions of dollars on compliance and the effective opinion of all the lawyers is "there's not enough guidance, anything you do that touches a token carries potential liability, and the SEC is refusing to lay down any sort of rules for what a compliant token looks like" Coinbase has plenty of lawyers and legal budget and would happily do an analysis if sufficient guidance actually…

You seem to know more about this, so I'm wondering: is "most tokens are really securities, but the way tokens work means you couldn't really make them compliant securities in the same way that my paper plane is a plane but I won't get FAA approval to sell it to American Airlines" a way of envisioning the world on this? Or are 'compliant securities' theoretically a possible thing in some vision of the world where comp…

Securities regulators worldwide have devised processes for compliant crypto securities, so it is possible.

It’s more like the guy running the FAA is a former Boeing exec and refuses to grant airspace authorization to rocketry startups.

Re: Coinbase issued Wells notice by SEC

#135

Post by Taek »

8note wrote: post #106
Taek wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire crypto industry has spent billions of dollars on compliance and the effective opinion of all the lawyers is "there's not enough guidance, anything you do that touches a token carries potential liability, and the SEC is refusing to lay down any sort of rules for what a compliant token looks like" Coinbase has plenty of lawyers and legal budget and would happily do an analysis if sufficient guidance actually…

Isnt it obvious? A compliant token is a security. Trying to play games to make them not securities is where crypto's lawyers are going wrong Crypto is looking for a hack that can make their stuff not securities, and the SEC isn't playing along

If you take the SECs view on how securities work, everything from a house to a baseball card to a GPU is a security.

Re: Coinbase issued Wells notice by SEC

#136

Post by loeg »

peyton wrote: post #122
8note wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isnt it obvious? A compliant token is a security. Trying to play games to make them not securities is where crypto's lawyers are going wrong Crypto is looking for a hack that can make their stuff not securities, and the SEC isn't playing along

What’s a compliant token? How can I register my token with the SEC?

https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-ba...

Re: Coinbase issued Wells notice by SEC

#137

Post by robocat »

Mistletoe wrote: post #83
bardworx wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Predominantly, from my understanding, it’s because: 1. Bitcoin was classified as “currency” by Clayton. 2. It’s the closest to being decentralized so no “organization will benefit from the work of others”. 3. Growth of Bitcoin wasn’t initially speculative but as a use of currency, which is different from whatever token you fork as its goal would be for speculative trading, failing the Howey test.

Clayton said the same about Ethereum. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2019/03/12/sec-chair-clayto...

That was when Etherium was proof-of-work. I imagine it gets complicated now that you can earn staking rewards on your ETH, even though by default you earn 0% because by default you are not staking. So one major feature of “banking” your ETH at an exchange would be so the exchange provides a way to earn the “interest” on your deposit.

This creates a regulatory risk, and is one reason for owning BTC instead of ETH. Note I own a few ETH and 0 BTC, and ETH has dropped 10% compared against BTC recently (normally they seem to be highly correlated (even long-term) which implies to me that the market is somewhat driven by generic crypto sector investing).

Edit: Coinbase’s argument that their staking service is not a security: https://www.coinbase.com/blog/coinbases-staking-services-are...

Re: Coinbase issued Wells notice by SEC

#139

Post by TheAlchemist »

Ah Coinbase ! SEC already told them very clearly that those are securities.

Coinbase answer ? "Coinbase does not list securities. End of story"

Here is their own answer from a year ago: https://www.coinbase.com/blog/coinbase-does-not-list-securit...

They can cry all their want - it's all PR trying to get public support. Kind of like VCs did with SVB deposits insurance..

Re: Coinbase issued Wells notice by SEC

#140

Post by peterbonney »

TimJRobinson wrote: post #114
TylerE wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or coin base could actually hire and listen to them like a business trying to operate legitimately and honestly. Instead it’s the usual crypto playbook of “move fast and break things” and then play dumb.

They have been trying for years, the SEC does not want to engage in good faith discussion. They wrote a response about it here: https://www.coinbase.com/blog/we-asked-the-sec-for-reasonabl...

That is one side of a conversation where the other party as a rule never comments. Coinbase is simply not a reliable source for characterizing the SEC’s position on this.
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