Coinbase continues push to compel SEC to act on crypto rulemaking petition
Coinbase has doubled down on its push for a court order compelling the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to act on the firm’s crypto rulemaking petition.
Coinbase wants a mandamus issued within 30 days to compel the SEC to give an official answer on whether it will accept or deny the petition.
The SEC submitted a long-awaited status update on Oct. 12, vaguely stating that “commission staff provided a recommendation” to the SEC over Coinbase’s petition, but did not divulge any further details.
In an Oct. 13 X post, Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal slammed the SEC for dragging its heels, as he called for a mandamus to force the SEC into adequately outlining its intentions.
We’ve filed our response with the Third Circuit. Tl;dr: the SEC’s unilluminating “update” is mere bureaucratic pantomime and confirms that nothing short of mandamus will prompt the agency to take its obligations seriously. 1/3 https://t.co/DC1o8EflcH
— paulgrewal.eth (@iampaulgrewal) October 14, 2023
Grewal also shared Coinbase’s response to the SEC update that it filed with the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
“The SEC’s unilluminating report is mere bureaucratic pantomime and confirms that nothing short of mandamus will prompt the agency to take its obligations seriously. It took more than a year and an order from this Court to elicit even a staff-level recommendation,” the response reads, adding that:
“The Commission has resolved not to conduct the rulemaking Coinbase requested, and it will exploit every bureaucratic artifice in its arsenal to forestall judicial review so long as the Court allows it.”
Coinbase initially filed the rulemaking petition in July 2022, requesting the SEC to “propose and adopt rules” to govern the crypto market, including potential rules to clearly outline which digital assets fall under the definition of securities.
After the SEC failed to respond, Coinbase filed a petition for mandamus nine months later, seeking the court to compel the SEC to give a “yes or no” answer.
Related: Coinbase spot trading volume falls by 52% compared to 2022: Report
However, the SEC has fired back on multiple occasions, refuting the need to meet Coinbase’s requirements while also asking the court to deny Coinbase’s petition for mandamus.
In mid June, the SEC then asked the court for an additional 120 days to respond to the rulemaking petition. Such a timeline suggests that the agency may have an answer by the end of October or early November.
Magazine: How to protect your crypto in a volatile market — Bitcoin OGs and experts weigh in
As a milestone is reached of 50,000 migrants crossing the Channel since he became prime minister, Keir Starmer finds himself in a familiar place – seemingly unable to either stop the boats, or escape talking about them.
Home Office data shows 50,271 people made the journey since the election last July, after 474 migrants arrived on Monday. This is around 13,000 higher than the comparable period the previous year.
Politics Live: Starmer hits unwanted small boat crossings milestone
Starmer has tweeted more than 10 times about this issue in the past week alone, more than any other.
On Monday he wrote on X: “If you come to this country illegally, you will face detention and return. If you come to this country and commit a crime, we will deport you as soon as possible.”
It could be a tweet by a politician of any party on the right – and many voters (and Labour MPs) will say it’s right that the prime minister is taking this issue seriously.
Illegal – or irregular – migration is a relatively small proportion of total migration. Net migration was down at 431,000 in 2024 which the OCED say is comparable to other high-income countries. But it is of course highly visible and politically charged.
Nigel Farage’s Reform party have had a busy few months campaigning on it, and the prime minister has been toughening up his language in response.
Shortly after the local elections in May in which Reform won hundreds of seats and took control of councils, Starmer made his speech in which he warned: “In a diverse nation like ours, without fair immigration rules, we risk becoming an island of strangers.”
It outraged some in his own party, and he later said he regretted that language.
But it was part of a speech which made clear that he wanted action – vowing to end “years of uncontrolled migration” in a way “that will finally take back control of our borders and close the book on a squalid chapter for our politics.”
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to the Border Force compound in Dover, Kent. Pic: PA
It’s a long way from his early months as Labour leader in 2020 when he said: “We welcome migrants, we don’t scapegoat them.” Migration did not feature as one of his five missions for “change” at the general election.
The strategy by Starmer and his minister is to talk up forthcoming new measures – a crackdown on social media adverts by traffickers, returns of people without a right to be in the UK which are indeed higher than under the Conservatives, and last week, a “one in, one out” deal with France to send people back across the channel.
The government say some people have been detained, although it is not known when these returns will happen. Ministers are also still pointing the finger at the previous Conservative government – which found stopping the boats easy to say and hard to achieve.
Read More:
Kemi Badenoch suggests asylum seekers should be housed in ‘Nightingale’ camps
What is the UK-France migrant returns deal, who will be returned and how many?
Baroness Jacqui Smith, a former home secretary, said this morning: “I don’t think it was our fault that it was enabled to take root. We’ve taken our responsibility to work internationally, to change the law, to improve the way in which the asylum system works, to take through legislation to strengthen the powers that are available.
“The last government did none of those things and focused on gimmicks. And it’s because of that, that the crime behind this got embedded in the way which it did. And that won’t be solved overnight.”
But for a prime minister who appears to have come to this issue reluctantly, talking about it a lot – and suggesting he’ll be judged on whether he can tackle it – risks raising expectations.
Joe Twyman, of the pollsters Deltapoll said: “You cannot simply out-Farage Nigel Farage when it comes to the subject of immigration. In a sense, Labour is falling into precisely the same trap that the Conservatives fell into. They’re giving significant prominence to a subject where they don’t have much control”.
Starmer has avoided mentioning firm numbers on how many migrants his crackdown may stop, but as previous prime ministers have found with the difficult issue of controlling migration, if you ask to be judged on delivery, voters will do so.
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