SEC facing huge criticism for the lawsuit against Kraken exchange
The top financial regulatory body sued the Kraken crypto exchange. Kraken exchange followed a Coinbase-like path to fight against the suit.
Kraken is a popular American exchange after the Coinbase exchange. In 2011 this exchange was co-founded by Jesse Powell, Thanh Luu and Michael Gronager. In 2022, the valuation of this exchange was nearly $10.8 billion. In early of this year, Kraken was sued by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for providing crypto staking services. Because of the bad financial position, the company settled the case with the SEC & paid a $30 million fine as well as terminated crypto staking services for American customers.
On 20 Nov 2023, In a complaint, the US SEC confirmed that it sued the Kraken crypto exchange for offering unregistered securities trading and failing to register as a broker with the SEC body.
In this suit, the SEC body mentioned several top crypto assets as unregistered security tokens. These digital assets are Solana, Cardano, Matic, ICP, Atom, Algo, Sand, Mana, and CHZ.
In response to this suit, the Kraken executives denied all the SEC’s allegations and said that the exchange never listed or offered trading of unregistered assets.
Exchange confirmed that it will continuously offer all the services as usual without any interruptions despite the SEC’s action. In short, Kraken is going to fight against the SEC’s charges instead of choosing a settlement option.
Notebely SEC’s allegations were very similar to the list of charges that was initiated by the SEC body against the public crypto exchange Coinbase.
The majority of the crypto proponents criticised the SEC body for such unethical regulatory action against the Kraken exchange.
Notably, the members of the U.S. Congress, including Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis and Warren Davidson supported Kraken’s exchange and criticised the SEC body. These crypto-friendly senators urged the US Congress to interfere in this matter & bring a clear regulatory framework for the crypto sector so that crypto firms can provide crypto services without facing big legal issues.
Read also: Lawsuit against Apple for blocking crypto payments
