Coinbase CEO to meet US House Democrats on Wednesday
10:04 pm Monday, July 17th, 2023
(Reuters) -Coinbase Chief Executive Brian Armstrong will meet privately with a group of U.S. House of Representatives Democrats on Wednesday morning and plans to make remarks on the future of digital asset legislation.
The meeting comes as Coinbase and Binance – two of the world’s largest crypto exchanges – are grappling with lawsuits brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly failing to register their operations with the agency.
At the meeting, Armstrong will also touch upon related issues, such as tax, national security, privacy, and climate, a New Democrat Coalition spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
Coinbase did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside business hours.
If the SEC lawsuits are successful, they could transform the crypto market by successfully asserting the SEC’s jurisdiction over the industry which for years has argued that tokens do not constitute securities and should not be regulated by the commission.
Both Coinbase and Binance deny the SEC’s allegations and have pledged to vigorously defend themselves in court.
Armstrong is an outspoken SEC critic who has called SEC Chair Gary Gensler an “outlier” among Washington policymakers.
(Reporting by Mrinmay Dey and Shubhendu Deshmukh in Bengaluru; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Edwina Gibbs)
