BlockBeats news, on July 22, according to The Wall Street Journal, Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal stated that Coinbase has reached a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, under which the SEC will pay $150,000 and revise its recordkeeping policies. The lawsuit revealed that the SEC lost communication records from former Chair Gary Gensler and other senior officials spanning nearly a year during the peak of cryptocurrency enforcement activities.
Coinbase previously requested documents from the SEC regarding how it applies securities laws to digital assets, was denied, and subsequently filed a lawsuit, which was supported by the court. The SEC stated that some text messages were lost due to an automatic data deletion process. Grewal noted that the SEC has previously imposed billions of dollars in fines on financial institutions for similar recordkeeping issues.
In February of this year, Coinbase also reached a settlement with the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation over another Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Coinbase stated that the lawsuit revealed the FDIC had requested nearly twenty banks to suspend cryptocurrency-related activities since 2022; the released documents subsequently triggered congressional hearings and led a court to rule that the FDIC had violated federal law.
Grewal stated that both lawsuits center on government transparency and due process, as the American public has the right to know whether regulators have secretly restricted legitimate crypto businesses' access to banking services.