Coinbase is going through a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) probe into whether or not it allowed customers to commerce digital tokens that ought to have been registered as securities, Bloomberg has reported. Coinbase, concerned not directly in one other probe by the SEC and state of New York, not too long ago caught the regulator’s eye after increasing the variety of tokens it gives for buying and selling. 

After taking a conservative strategy to itemizing cryptocurrencies, Coinbase now lets Americans commerce greater than 150 tokens, in line with Bloomberg. If any of these are thought-about to be securities, it might have to register as an change with the SEC. A token is taken into account to be a safety if it entails traders placing up funds for a corporation with a purpose to revenue from the work of its management.

Last week, the fee accused a former Coinbase worker of violating insider-trading guidelines by serving to his brother and a pal purchase dozens of several types of tokens earlier than they had been listed on the platform. Coinbase itself wasn’t accused of any wrongdoing, however the SEC mentioned it thought-about 9 of the handfuls of digital tokens traded by the boys to be securities, together with seven listed by the change. 

In a response by chief authorized officer Paul Grewal, Coinbase mentioned that it “does not list securities on the platform. Period.” As proof of that, it mentioned that the US Department of Justice “reviewed the same facts [as the SEC] and chose not to file securities fraud charges against those involved.” 

Coinbase has beforehand complained that there is no regulatory framework for digital asset securities. As it occurred, the corporate filed a petition for rule making to make clear these guidelines simply earlier than the SEC filed fees. “Instead of crafting tailored rules in an inclusive and transparent way, the SEC is relying on these types of one-off enforcement actions to try to bring all digital assets into its jurisdiction, even those assets that are not securities,” Grewal wrote.