Court Requests Clarity from SEC on Coinbase’s Request for Clarity

The SEC has seven days to respond to a court’s request for clarity on Coinbase’s lawsuit against the regulator

article-image

Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

The court overseeing the Coinbase v. SEC case — not to be confused with the SEC v. Coinbase case — is seeking clarity on whether or not the SEC, with its legal action against Coinbase, will be denying the exchange its request for clarity.

The court request comes after Coinbase filed a writ of mandamus, essentially asking the court to oversee the commission’s approach to regulating digital assets. 

The SEC is now being asked by the court to respond to a few points within seven days. The Court wants to know if the new suit against Coinbase means that the SEC is moving to deny its rulemaking petition, as well as whether the SEC needs more time to ponder the petition.

In addition, the court — in consideration of the writ of mandamus — wants the SEC to give an argument on why the court should not maintain jurisdiction which would allow it to order periodic reports as well as establish deadlines depending on how the SEC responds to the exchange. 

Coinbase’s chief legal officer, Paul Grewal, tweeted, “We continue to believe that rules of the road, from legislation or rulemaking or both, must come before enforcement actions. That is why we petitioned the SEC for rulemaking nearly a year ago in the first place.”

The SEC has previously been forced by the court to respond to a regulatory clarity request from Coinbase following Coinbase’s lawsuit against the commission earlier this year.  

In a May response, the commission said, “Deliberating over the kind of significant changes sought by Coinbase, which could affect both crypto assets and the securities markets more generally, takes time—including, as here, time to weigh whether or not to initiate a rulemaking proceeding about such topics in the first instance.”

The SEC filed a lawsuit against Coinbase on Tuesday, June 6, and listed multiple charges against the exchange — including the sale of unlicensed securities and operating as an unregistered exchange.


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template.png

Research

RTK networks are critical to enabling a world of ubiquitous autonomous drones, vehicles, and industrial robots. We believe the GEOD token enables both a cost and product advantage for the GEODNET RTK network, which will allow it to out-compete multi-billion dollar incumbents Trimble and Hexagon.

article-image

Revenue estimates for the third quarter come in at $33 billion, which would be an 83% increase from the prior year

article-image

Senator Cynthia Lummis hopes a US strategic bitcoin reserve can be teed up for “adoption in 2025”

article-image

As EIP-4844 “blobs” transform the economics of Ethereum layer-2s, a growing debate pits long-term scalability against immediate ETH value

article-image

Prosecutors argued that FTX co-founder Gary Wang cooperated in their case against former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

article-image

The two largest crypto exchanges respectively run the second- and sixth-largest Solana validators

article-image

MicroStrategy’s bitcoin buying has exploded — it now holds 1.7% of the asset’s circulating supply