Coinbase CEO says the crypto exchange is preparing to go to court with the U.S. SEC
Coinbase is preparing for a years-long court battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company’s chief executive told CNBC Tuesday, after the regulator warned the cryptocurrency exchange of potential violations of securities law.
Last month, the SEC issued Coinbase with a Wells notice, which is often one of the final steps before the regulator formally issues charges. It generally lays out the framework of the regulatory argument and offers the potentially accused an opportunity to rebut the SEC’s claims.
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, called the issuing of the Wells notice “unfortunate” and said the company has not got any more information on the specific issues the SEC has.
“We’ve met with them over 30 times in the last year … never got a single piece of feedback from them about what we can be doing better or differently, and then this Wells Notice arrived,” Armstrong told CNBC in an interview.
“I think we’re going to have to actually end up going to court to get the clarity we need and create the case law.”
Case law refers to judicial precedent.
The SEC has ramped up its scrutiny on crypto firms, going after companies it alleges are offering unregistered securities. The SEC is using enforcement actions to target firms.
One of its most high profile lawsuits is with a company called Ripple, which has been going on since 2020. The SEC alleges Ripple sold unregistered securities. Ripple disputes the claim.
When asked by CNBC if Coinbase is prepared for a years-long battle with the SEC, Armstrong replied, “Absolutely.”
“We never seek litigation but it seems in this case they have initiated it and if we need to go to the courts to get the clarity that we need then we are very prepared to do that,” Armstrong said.
The cryptocurrency industry has complained that the SEC has not given companies clarity on what they can and cannot do. The SEC, meanwhile, argues that the rules are clear under existing laws.
Armstrong accused the SEC of an “abdication of responsibility.”
“The regulators’ job is to publish a clear rulebook and allow that market to be safe but also to flourish in that country and I think they’ve completely abdicated responsibility,” Armstrong said.
The SEC was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, slammed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He also said the cryptocurrency exchange is looking to invest more outside of the U.S.
Carlos Jasso | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Investors in Coinbase, which is listed in the U.S. and whose stock is up around 90% this year, will be watching how the SEC issue plays out. Barclays said in a note this month that “regulatory overhang” on Coinbase’s stock “increased meaningfully” when the SEC issued the Wells notice.
“We think the most onerous outcome could be that, if various crypto assets are deemed securities, Coinbase would therefore need to register as a securities exchange, in order to keep offering trading in those assets,” Barclays added.
“Furthermore, under current securities law, securities exchanges are not permitted to offer services directly to retail customers, and Coinbase could theoretically be forced to separate the exchange and broker portions of the business.”
Coinbase considers relocating from the U.S.
On Tuesday, Armstrong spoke at a fintech event in London. He said said the U.S. “has the potential to be an important market in crypto” but right now is not delivering regulatory clarity. If this goes on, he said, then Coinbase would consider options of investing more abroad, including relocating from the U.S. to elsewhere.
“I think if a number of years go by where we don’t see regulatory clarity around us … we may have to consider investing more elsewhere in the world. Anything including, you know, relocating,” Armstrong said.
He added that the company is “looking at other markets” to invest in beyond the U.S. and was “probably going to invest more” in the U.K., given in its push to position itself as a crypto hub.
“We’re a business … like any business we have a budget and we have to decide where to allocate it. And so that means what products we want to build, but it also means what countries we want to invest it in any given year,” Armstrong told CNBC.
“And with the U.S. kind of lagging a little bit … we are looking at other markets.”
FILE PHOTO: Ariel Cohen during a panel at DLD Munich Conference 2020, Europe’s big innovation conference, Alte Kongresshalle, Munich.
Picture Alliance for DLD | Hubert Burda Media | AP
Navan, a developer of corporate travel and expense software, expects its market cap to be as high as $6.5 billion in its IPO, according to an updated regulatory filing on Friday.
The company said it anticipates selling shares at $24 to $26 each. Its valuation in that range would be about $3 billion less than where private investors valued Navan in 2022, when the company announced a $300 million funding round.
CoreWeave, Circle and Figma have led a resurgence in tech IPOs in 2025 after a drought that lasted about three years. Navan filed its original prospectus on Sept. 19, with plans to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “NAVN.”
Last week, the U.S. government entered a shutdown that has substantially reduced operations inside of agencies including the SEC. In August, the agency said its electronic filing system, EDGAR, “is operated pursuant to a contract and thus will remain fully functional as long as funding for the contractor remains available through permitted means.”
Cerebras, which makes artificial intelligence chips, withdrew its registration for an IPO days after the shutdown began.
Navan CEO Ariel Cohen and technology chief Ilan Twig started the company under the name TripActions in 2015. It’s based in Palo Alto, California, and had around 3,400 employees at the end of July.
For the July quarter, Navan recorded a $38.6 million net loss on $172 million in revenue, which was up about 29% year over year. Competitors include Expensify, Oracle and SAP. Expensify stock closed at $1.64on Friday, down from its $27 IPO price in 2021.
Navan ranked 39th on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list, after also appearing in 2024.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, speaking with CNBC’s Jim Cramer during a CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer event at the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 7th, 2025.
Kevin Stankiewicz | CNBC
Shares of Amazon, Nvidia and Tesla each dropped around 5% on Friday, as tech’s megacaps lost $770 billion in market cap, following President Donald Trump’s threats for increased tariffs on Chinese goods.
With tech’s trillion-dollar companies occupying an increasingly large slice of the U.S. market, their declines send the Nasdaq down 3.6% and the S&P 500 down 2.7%. For both indexes, it was the worst day since April, when Trump said he would slap “reciprocal” duties on U.S. trading partners.
After market close on Friday, Trump declared in a social media post that the U.S. would impose a 100% tariff on China and on Nov. 1 it would apply export controls “on any and all critical software.”
Amazon, Nvidia and Tesla all slipped about 2% in extended trading following the post.
The president’s latest threats are disrupting, at least briefly, what had been a sustained rally in tech, built on hundreds of billions of dollars in planned spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure.
In late September, Nvidia, which makes graphics processing units for training AI models, became the first company to reach a market cap of $4.5 trillion. Nvidia alone saw its market capitalization decline by nearly $229 billion on Friday.
OpenAI counts on Nvidia’s GPUs from a series of cloud suppliers, including Microsoft. OpenAI is only seeing rising demand.
In September it introduced the Sora 2 video creation app, and this week the company said the ChatGPT assistant now boasts over 800 million weekly users. But Microsoft must buy infrastructure to operate its cloud data centers. Microsoft’s market cap dropped by $85 billion on Friday.
The sell-off wiped out Amazon’s gains for the year. That stock is now down 2% so far in 2025. It competes with Microsoft to rent out GPUs from its cloud data centers, but it doesn’t have major business with OpenAI. The online retailer is now worth $121 billion less than it was on Thursday.
“There continues to be a lot of noise about the impact that tariffs will have on retail prices and consumption,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told analysts in July. “Much of it thus far has been wrong and misreported. As we said before, it’s impossible to know what will happen.”
Tesla, which introduced lower-priced vehicles on Tuesday, saw its market capitalization sink by $71 billion.
The automaker reports third-quarter results on Oct. 22, with Microsoft earnings scheduled for the following week. Nvidia reports in November.
Google parent Alphabet and Facebook owner Meta fell 2% and almost 4%, respectively.
WATCH: Pres. Trump: Calculating massive increase of tariffs on Chinese products into U.S.
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