The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued cryptocurrency platform Coinbase for operating as a stock exchange and an unregistered stockbroker, according to an official statement.
After learning about the demand for the shares of the cryptocurrency exchange platform, which is the only one listed in the US after its IPO in 2021, they sank more than 20% in electronic activities prior to the opening of the New York Stock Exchange this Tuesday.
This legal action comes one day after the SEC filed a complaint against Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency platform, for irregularly managing its users’ funds and lying to investors and regulators, among other things.
In a statement, the SEC ensures that Coinbase did not register the supply and demand of its cryptocurrency staking or betting service or its operations as a clearing house to guarantee exchanges between investors, credit institutions and other financial agents.
“Since at least 2019Coinbase has made billions of dollars illegally facilitating the buying and selling of crypto asset securities“, maintains the SEC in the note in which it insists that Coinbase mixes the traditional services of the stock market with those of a stockbroker without having registered any of those functions.
According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the fact that Coinbase is not registered has deprived investors of protections, such as inspection by the SEC or safeguards for potential conflicts of interest.
“You can’t just ignore the rules because you don’t like them or because you prefer different ones: the consequences for the investing public are too great,” said the director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, Gurbir Grewal, quoted in the notice.
Yesterday the SEC filed a total of 13 charges against Binance and its founder, Changpeng Zhao.whom he accuses of blatantly ignoring US securities laws and earning billions of dollars in exchange for putting their clients’ assets at “significant risk”.
“Zhao and the Binance entities were not only aware of the rules, but consciously chose to evade them and put their clients and investors at risk.all in an attempt to maximize their own profits,” the president of the US regulator, Gary Gensler, said in a statement.
MORE NEWS:
EFE International news agency based in Madrid and present in more than 110 countries.