Coinbase boss says SEC’s Wells notice boosted morale

Brian Armstrong treated the SEC’s recent notice as a better outcome for his confidence in the crypto sector.

Brian Armstrong is the CEO & co-founder of Coinbase crypto exchange. This exchange was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. Since 2021, Coinbase is publicly trading on the Nasdaq exchange under the COIN index. At present, Coinbase is the top regulated Crypto exchange in the US. 

On 26 March 2023, Coinbase CEO Armstrong said that a recent Wells notice received by the Coinbase exchange from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) caused a noticeable boost in morale.

Further, he added that Coinbase will keep its services better with better development works and also will keep improving in terms of compliance, without deviating from the initial goal. 

Wells notice

On 22 March 2023, Coinbase exchange received a Wells notice from the US SEC body over some of the listed crypto assets & staking services.

Wells notice is an advance notice that the corresponding body may take enforcement action over that particular service about which Wells notice was issued. 

Coinbase Executives already confirmed that the Coinbase team approached the SEC agency 30 times over the last 9 months of the time frame but the SEC agency never provided any kind of information or objection about its crypto services. 

Many crypto experts noted that such regulatory action by the US government agencies shows that they want to degrade the confidence of crypto companies and in this situation court fight is only the option. 

Earlier, in Feb of this year, Kraken settled its case with the SEC agency. The SEC claimed that Kraken’s Crypto staking services were against federal securities law. Due to the company’s bad financial position, Kraken decided to settle the case & paid $30 million  and also suspend crypto staking services for US-based customers. 

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