SEC Officially Dismisses Coinbase Lawsuit Over Crypto Securities Claims

The Securities and Exchange Commission has followed through with its agreement and voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit against crypto exchange Coinbase, per a court filing Thursday.

“The Commission’s decision to exercise its discretion and dismiss this pending enforcement action rests on its judgment that the dismissal will facilitate the Commission’s ongoing efforts to reform and renew its regulatory approach to the crypto industry, not on any assessment of the merits of the claims alleged in the action,” the SEC wrote in a statement.

Last Friday, Coinbase announced that the SEC had agreed to end the case, pending commissioner approval.

The statement marks the first public commentary from the agency detailing why it has opted, over the last two weeks, to end lawsuits and investigations into some of the crypto industry’s biggest players, including Robinhood, Uniswap Labs, OpenSea, and, earlier today, Consensys. (Disclosure: Consensys is one of 22 investors in an editorially independent Decrypt.)

It would appear, then, that the SEC’s new leadership has decided to wipe the slate clean and start fresh with its assessment of how crypto companies and projects should best comply with existing securities laws.

Certainly, the development is an overwhelmingly welcome one for the likes of Coinbase and other firms that have cumulatively spent hundreds of millions of dollars fighting the SEC in court.

But it could also mean that the crypto industry isn’t just suddenly off the hook for good. Legal experts told Decrypt earlier on Thursday that many tokens may still ultimately be labeled securities by the SEC’s new leadership, even if secondary marketplaces and exchanges like Coinbase appear to be in the clear for now.

In a surreal sign of how abruptly the SEC has changed course on its crypto policy, Thursdsay’s stipulation to dismiss the Coinbase lawsuit was signed by Nicholas Margida, an SEC attorney who led the charge against the crypto exchange for years.

Barely a year ago, Margida derided Coinbase in a letter to the case’s judge as a “multi-billion dollar entity” that schemed to “ignor[e] more than 75 years of controlling law” and was now knowingly misrepresenting facts in a bid to “justify its illegal conduct.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated after publication with additional details.