U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has failed to win a lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“(The SEC) argued that at least some of the cryptocurrency transactions Kraken conducted on its network were investment contracts and therefore securities and therefore subject to the securities laws,” U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick wrote in his decision. opinion It was made public Friday in federal court in San Francisco.
Judge Orrick noted in his affidavit that Kraken made more than $43 million in profit from its trading desk between 2020 and 2021, in part because it charged trading fees and placed few limits on the number of assets that could be bought and sold.
The SEC filed suit on November 20, 2023, accusing Kraken of operating as an unregistered securities exchange, broker-dealer, and clearing organization. The agency also alleged that the exchange commingled customer assets with its own and mishandled customer information.
In particular, the SEC is targeting Cardano’s ADA, Cosmos’ ATOM, Filecoin’s FIL, and Solana’s brush
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Among the six different tokens offered by Kraken, securities include:
“While cryptocurrencies themselves are relatively new financial products, the principles that guide the SEC’s attempts to assert regulatory authority over them are not new,” Judge Orrick wrote after a lengthy reflection on the so-called subtest used to determine whether an asset is a security. Drawing on a 1946 U.S. Supreme Court case frequently cited by the SEC, the test is It is used to determine whether an asset qualifies as an investment contract and therefore as a security.
As part of Kraken’s motion to dismiss the case, the exchange argued that the SEC was exceeding its congressionally authorized duties.
“The SEC does not have the authority to regulate all speculative investments,” the company’s attorneys wrote.
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has argued since taking office in 2021 that most digital tokens are unregistered securities and should be subject to SEC oversight. Under his watch, the securities regulator has sued some of the world’s largest cryptocurrency companies, including Binance, Coinbase, and Uniswap.
Judge Orrick noted in his opinion that Binance and Coinbase also failed to dismiss some aspects of the SEC’s lawsuit.
Kraken has 20 days to respond to the complaint, and a trial date originally scheduled for January 14 has been proposed for October 15.
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