Coinbase under SEC’s radar for crypto listings
Coinbase has been in the news, for legal reasons, for the past few days. Just last week, the crypto exchange’s ex-product manageLastWahi was arrested. According to Bloomberg, Wahi allegedly disclosed confidential token listing information on Coinbase and gave illegal trading advice to his brother and a friend.
Read more: US authorities arrest former Coinbase employee for insider trading
At the time, Bloomberg’s sources had claimed, “the exchange operator was not the focus of the probe and will not be charged.” But now, in the latest development, Coinbase is under the SEC’s radar over cryptocurrency listings.
Coinbase ‘Mistakenly’ Allowed Americans to Trade?
Per Bloomberg Ally Versprille,
“The investigation by the SEC’s enforcement unit precedes the agency’s investigation into an alleged insider trading scheme that led the regulator last week to sue a former Coinbase executive and two other people.”
Bloomberg disclosed that through the probe, the regulatory agency is investigating early” that the regulatory agency allowed Americans to trade digital assets that should have been registered as securities.
In an emailed response to Reuters, a Coinbase spokesperson said the company does not list securities on its platform, adding,
“We believe there is a huge untapped market and the US risks falling behind if the SEC does not engage in a transparent and public regulatory process for digital asset securities.”
Well, Coinbase has time and again openly asked the SEC to provide clarity and develop rules with respect to digital securities.
Citing two sources, Bloomberg’s report added that regulatory scrutiny of Coinbase has increased ever since the platform expanded the number of tokens it offers for trading. Despite being in a fix, the exchange has announced the listing of the Chinese oracle project NEST under the experimental label. The project, as such, is considered shady, with Chinese journalist Colin Wu tweeting that it has a “bad reputation” and has all but disappeared since gaining popularity in 2020.
Alongside, two other tokens – Celer Network and Stargate Finance – are included in Coinbase’s latest listing plan. In terms of market cap, said tokens were ranked #163 and #356 on Coinbase at press time.
