Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency scholarship in the United States, has filed a request for the American court of appeal to the second circuit.
The company asks the court to rule according to which cryptocurrency transactions carried out on its platform are not subject to federal securities laws.
This legal action stems from a dispute in progress with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which continued Coinbase in 2023 for having pretended to be pretended as a non -registered stock exchange, according to Bloomberg.
The central question in this case is whether digital tokens are considered titles under American law. Titles, such as shares and bonds, are regulated by the SEC to guarantee the protection of investors.
If cryptographic tokens are classified as titles, platforms like Coinbase would be required to register with the SEC, which would impose significant obligations and restrictions of conformity.
Howey test
The key legal question revolves around the “Howey test”, a framework established by the Supreme Court in 1946 to decide whether a transaction is considered an “investment contract”.
Coinbase says that cryptographic transactions on its platform do not meet the criteria described in the Howey test. The company argues that these transactions involve direct sales of digital assets between buyers and anonymous sellers, without any promise of shared or common business.
Recently, a New York Federal Judge authorized Coinbase to call on this issue directly before a superior court, in the meantime suspected the lawsuit.
The company says that the resolution of this issue is crucial for the cryptocurrency sector, which has been the subject of increased monitoring and coercive measures under the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, the management of the SEC has changed under the direction of the acting president of the Trump administration, Mark Uyeda.
The agency announced the training of a working group focused on the creation of clearer regulatory directives for the cryptography industry, signaling a potential change compared to heavy application tactics observed in previous years.
