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Nearly 31 cryptocurrencies have been swept up in a new legal complaint targeting major crypto exchange Coinbase.
Over the weekend, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield filed a complaint against Coinbase, alleging it sold unregistered securities to residents of his U.S. state. The state-level lawsuit follows the SEC's decision to dismiss its lawsuit against Coinbase in February, as the agency made a U-turn in its regulation-by-enforcement approach.
The lawsuit has quickly gained attention for its sweeping scope. According to Justin Slaughter, former SEC Senior Adviser and Chief Policy Adviser at CFTC, the Oregon AG's complaint is even broader than the SEC case against Coinbase. For context, 13 cryptocurrencies were named in the now-dismissed SEC lawsuit.
Tomiwabold OlajideIn a tweet, Slaughter wrote, "More to come, but one thing that jumps out about the Oregon AG suit is it actually covers many more tokens than the SEC complaint did, with 31 tokens claimed to be unregistered securities, including UNI, AAVE, FLOW, LINK, MKR, and even XRP. It's a true kitchen sink lawsuit."
In response to this comment, Coinbase CLO Paul Grewal highlighted the broad scope of the case, which characterizes crypto assets as "crypto securities."
31 cryptocurrencies named
The lawsuit alleged that Coinbase, through the Coinbase Platform and Coinbase Prime, made available for trading in Oregon crypto assets that are offered and sold as investment contracts and, hence, are securities.
Godfrey BenjaminThe complaint listed 31 cryptocurrencies, including AAVE, ADA, ALGO, AMP, APE, ATOM, AVAX, AXS, CHZ, COMP, DAS, DDX, EOS, FIL, FLOW, ICP, LCX, LINK, MATIC, MIR, MKR, NEAR, POWR, RLY, SAND, SOL, UNI, VGX, wLUNA, XRP and XYO. The lawsuit claimed that the crypto assets impacted included, but were "not limited to, the units of each of the cryptocurrency securities described."
Grewal highlighted this in his tweet: "XRP, SOL, whatever: basically no matter your asset or project, Oregon AG Dan Rayfield has accused you of violating securities laws and fleecing your token holders. It's why we notified about 560,000 Coinbase customers in Oregon about the unlawful action taken in their name."
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin