Coinbase CEO: There’s a ‘Turf War’ Between SEC and CFTC
Brian Armstrong is having a moment of truth about crypto regulation in the US and the way the SEC and CFTC behave.
CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Brian Armstrong had an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
In it, he discussed the lawsuit filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission on June 6 as part of the wider crackdown on the crypto domain. The SEC believes that Coinbase is a security exchange, broker-dealership, and clearing house that operates without a corresponding license.
“The assets that we do trade, those are commodities, so they don’t require those registrations […] we are trading on our exchange crypto commodities.”
Despite not claiming that Coinbase is a broker-dealer, Armstrong mentioned that the exchange had faced difficulties activating a license. Because the regulators don't allow them to do so.
Armstrong also touched upon the competition between two financial watchdogs the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission which seem to be struggling to divide their responsibilities. According to him, there’s a “turf war” going on between them.
Despite the hurdles posed by the litigation, he said that the lawsuit will eventually help the US cryptocurrency industry at large by providing clarity and helping the US to be on par with the rest of the world in terms of the industry's development.
“We will see entrepreneurs who left the U.S. come back. They’ll say we won’t be attacked randomly or have incredibly high legal bills at any given moment,” he said, adding that there’s a lot that can be borrowed from traditional finance. They include basic consumer protection, financial statement audit requirements as well as AML and KYC procedures.
Previously, Gagarin News reported that Armstrong said that the SEC’s tone started to change last year.
