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Robinhood is “actively reviewing” its crypto offering after the US. Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) charged Binance.US and Coinbase.
Robinhood and the SEC’s charges against Binance and Coinbase
The US financial services company, Robinhood, is taking steps to review its crypto offerings after charges made by the US SEC against Binance and Coinbase platforms.
In recent days, the regulator has been abuzz with accusations against the other platforms for their unregistered security offerings.
Specifically, the SEC has filed 13 charges against the Binance crypto-exchange and its co-founder and CEO, Changpeng CZ Zhao, for a variety of securities law violations.
Among the many charges is one that sees CZ and Binance as liars, as they have always said that Binance.US was a separate and independent crypto-exchange from Binance.com, when in fact they secretly controlled it behind the scenes.
Not only that, according to the SEC, CZ and Binance exercised control over customers’ assets, mixing their own funds with those of their customers so they could hijack the latter’s assets at their whim.
But the accusation affecting the entire crypto industry is still the same: the offering for trading of unregistered securities.
With regard to Coinbase, the SEC has accused Brian Armstrong’s company of never registering its staking-as-a-service and allegedly offering investors unauthorized securities.
Among these assets defined as securities, the SEC named SOL, ADA, MATIC, FIL, SAND, AXS, CHZ, FLOW, ICP, NEAR, VGX, DASH, and NEXO.
Robinhood and its reaction after the SEC’s charges against Binance and Coinbase
Hence, the situation in the US is not so rosy for those offering cryptocurrency trading. And so Robinhood is also vindicating its position on the matter.
Dan Gallagher, the company’s Chief Legal Compliance and Corporate Affairs Officer, told Bloomberg that Robinhood is “actively reviewing” the regulator’s analysis “to determine what action to take, if any.”
Robinhood is a US financial services company that facilitates commission-free trading in stocks, exchange-traded funds and cryptocurrencies, as well as individual retirement accounts via a mobile app.
Users of the platform can choose from 18 different currencies, as the broker offers relatively limited access to cryptocurrencies compared to the hundreds of digital currencies listed by exchanges.
However, on the list are Solana, Cardano, and Polygon, the very ones that are deemed securities by the SEC, and therefore unregistered.
For the platform, the best person to review this offering of his involving cryptos could only be Gallagher, as he is also a former SEC commissioner.
Daily trading volumes of crypto-exchanges on the decline
Taking a look at the numbers reported by CoinMarketCap, it is easy to see how the latest SEC news is negatively affecting crypto-exchange numbers.
And indeed, Binance and Coinbase are the top two crypto-exchanges in the rankings on Market Spot, and it is they who have kicked off a decline in daily trading volume.
Specifically, at the time of writing, Binance has recorded a -17% in the last 24 hours and Coinbase a -23%.
Fortunately, not quite everyone is succumbing to the general FUD behind this SEC crackdown on US-based crypto-exchanges.
And indeed, these very days, Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest has doubled its stake in Coinbase, with the latest purchase of $21.6 million in COIN.
Who knows, maybe the investment rockstar is taking advantage of Coinbase’s falling share price due to SEC allegations to accumulate COINs and, in any case, continue to support the only publicly traded crypto-exchange.