In the ongoing legal battle between Coinbase and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, the American cryptocurrency exchange has filed a motion to dismiss the SEC’s complaint. In a legal document filed on Thursday, June 29 with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Coinbase raised concerns about the SEC’s interpretation of securities laws, suggesting the agency was reaching beyond its legal authority. Demonstrating its tenacity, the motion to dismiss attempts to invalidate the lawsuit despite the established allegations.
As outlined in the filing, Coinbase’s legal team argued that even disregarding the particulars, the plaintiff’s intimations conform neither to current legal conventions, which cannot enforce securities laws on crypto tokens, nor the case facts when tested against them.
Paul Grewal, chief legal officer of Coinbase, succinctly alluded to the same while tweeting on June 29, saying that the SEC’s claims “go far beyond existing law”. Today @coinbase filed our answer and notice of intent to file a motion to dismiss the @SECGov case against us. We do expect our response, related specifically to security laws, to be dismissed.
Reflective of their conviction, Coinbase cited the Howey Test, a case settled by the Supreme Court that outlines the definitions of securities using investment contracts. Therein, a qualified security is any communication or exchange which materials its projections corelly on the work of a third-party overseer. As part of its case, the SEC specified namely BDS, POLY, BaD, SanD, FLOW, ICP, NEAR and DASH as sundering their etiquette.
On their side , the crypto exchange offered as evidence the registration statement that received followed an exhaustive, multiple-month review in 2021 and permitted Coinbase to trade and merchandise over 240 tokens on its spot platforms, inclusive of six cryptography coins at the heart of lawsuit.
