Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, stated that the crypto business would have ended if the US authorities had demanded that they stop trading all assets but Bitcoin (BTC). He revealed in an interview that SEC suggested that Coinbase should make the change while the agency is preparing to sue them for seemingly acting as an unlicensed broker.
If Coinbase had agreed with the SEC’s demand, it would have delisted more than 200 tokens it provides, except BTC as it is the most traded crypto in the world. This would have created a dangerous precedent as SEC’s demand is biased and hard to follow for crypto businesses.
It would force the majority of American crypto firms and the casino crypto industry to operate unlawfully unless they registered with the SEC. ‘At that time, we were stuck with no other options. If all crypto assets had been delisted save BTC, the US crypto sector would have collapsed’, Armstrong stated alongside his decision to refute SEC’s suggestion.
‘Our decision is kind of a no-brainer. I’d rather go to court and find out what the court says. They came back and said BTC is the only non-security asset. We questioned their legal reasoning, pointing out that their view of the law differed from our own. They basically told us to delist everything except BTC and that they wouldn’t bother to explain it’, he added.
SEC reportedly came back to Coinbase to further push their request but the company still refused. Gary Gensler, SEC’s head, has highlighted how he believes most coins should be classified as securities. This is with the exception of BTC which is commonly classed as a commodity in the crypto industry.
In a lawsuit filed in June 2023, the SEC claimed that Coinbase had broken the law by failing to register as a broker, national securities exchange, and clearing agency. Solana, Cardano, and Polygon were named as examples of popular tokens on Coinbase’s market that were allegedly unregistered securities.
With the SEC requesting Coinbase to cease operations, many crypto users are starting to worry about their crypto assets. Many are also questioning whether BTC is indeed an asset or not.
Developers to release a new ETH upgrade
On the other hand, well-known dApps are said to possibly benefit financially from Layer 2 transactions under a new proposal for Ethereum (ETH) upgrade by creators. With EIP-6968, developers can stake a claim on a portion of the transaction fees accrued as a result of user activity on their smart contracts in exchange for a new token.
‘With CSR, projects can band together and create an L2 around their shared values and share sequencer fee revenue based on who drives the most usage. If adopted, this would open up new chances for a lucrative revenue stream for smart contract developers who deploy on L2s’, Kevin Owocki, one of the proposal’s co-authors, said.
The newly generated funds could be used to incentivise developer engagement in a network and subsidise the creation of dApps. Although Owocki first proposed EIP-6968 in May 2023, the idea became more popular as Owocki presented it at the current EthCC conference in Paris. This possibly new upgrade is also received well by crypto gaming fans because they believe that this would help the casino crypto industry to grow and prosper.
