After SEC Pressure, Coinbase Decides To Drop Interest Product

It was just a couple weeks ago that Coinbase posted a blog post, paired with a hefty Twitter thread from CEO Brian Armstrong highlighting recent challenges with the SEC. Armstrong described the agency’s behavior as “sketchy” after the SEC seemingly threatened the exchange that a lawsuit would be impending should Coinbase launch their expected interest-yielding product, Lend. If Armstrong’s tweet thread didn’t give it away, the company’s blog post, spearheaded by Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal, was undoubtedly lined with some of the firm’s frustrations. Now, less than a month later, reports have emerged that Coinbase has elected to halt it’s plans to launch Coinbase Lend. A Threat To DeFi? The news comes less than a week after SEC Chairman Gary Gensler told CNBC that his commission is under-staffed. Gensler echoed those sentiments in a Senate testimony last week, stating that the SEC “needs a lot more people.” He added in the testimony that he believed previous judiciary decisions established that many cryptocurrency tokens “do come under the securities law.” Gensler took the role with the SEC earlier this year, and came in with high expectations from retail investors. Elsewhere in the market, some state regulators seem to be working to try to fill the SEC’s role with interest-yielding products already on the market. A handful of state regulators in ...