The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has asked a New York court to dismiss a subpoena seeking to force Coinbase to produce documents related to its cryptocurrency assets. The SEC explained that the subpoena covers “basically all documents related in any way to cryptocurrency assets.”
SEC’s Court documents On Monday, the agency claimed it had granted Coinbase’s request to release additional documents, including documents from its investigative files unrelated to the Coinbase case and its fair notice.
“Coinbase is not satisfied and continues to request that the SEC conduct a broad search, including all agency records, all internal files, and all communications with government agencies and market participants,” the SEC wrote, adding that Coinbase failed to cite prior cases or legal principles to support its “extraordinary” request.
The SEC summarized that Coinbase requested “entirely irrelevant” documents that lacked any basis for considering the application of securities laws to Coinbase’s services or digital assets.
“If the SEC is going to embark on an unprecedented campaign of regulatory coercion, the least they can do for their targets and the public is transparency,” Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, told X in response to the SEC’s court filing.
According to court documents, Coinbase previously asked the court to issue a subpoena to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler and to retrieve Gensler’s personal emails as evidence. The request was denied by U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla in New York.
Last year Coinbase is being sued for operating as an unregistered securities exchange. The dispute centers on the SEC’s claim that many of the cryptocurrencies offered by Coinbase are actually securities and are subject to applicable regulations. Coinbase disagrees, arguing that most cryptocurrencies are not securities but rather digital goods.
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