• Robinhood, a securities brokerage firm that also offers cryptocurrency services, has revealed that it received a subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last December relating to its „cryptocurrency listings, custody of cryptocurrencies and platform operations.“
• The company currently lists 18 cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), and dogecoin (DOGE). If some of these are determined to be unregistered securities by the SEC, they might need to be delisted.
• The SEC’s regulatory crackdown on crypto in the US is part of a wider trend; other companies affected include Kraken, Binance, and Paxos.
Robinhood Receives SEC Subpoena Over Crypto Services
Robinhood, a securities brokerage firm that also offers cryptocurrency services, has revealed that it received a subpoena from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last December in relation to its “cryptocurrency listings, custody of cryptocurrencies and platform operations”. The company currently lists 18 different cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and Dogecoin (DOGE). If any of these are deemed unregistered securities by the SEC however, they may need to be delisted.
Crypto Regulatory Crackdown
The SEC’s regulatory crackdown on crypto in the US is part of a wider trend; other companies affected include Kraken, Binance and Paxos. Most recently Kraken was forced to pay a $30 million fine and shut down its staking services due to selling unregistered securities while Paxos was sued by the SEC for similar reasons.
Delisting Cryptocurrencies
In response to the subpoenas received from both the SEC and California Attorney General’s Office seeking information about trading platforms and customer assets among other things – Robinhood disclosed in its 10-K filing that if any of their supported cryptocurrencies are found to be securities then they might have no choice but to delist them from their platform.
FTX Collapse Linked?
It should be noted that this attention Robinhood is receiving from authorities seems linked with recent collapse FTX back late last year – though this hasn’t been officially confirmed yet by either party involved.
Conclusion
Overall it looks like we’re seeing an increasing amount of regulatory pressure being put on crypto firms with even larger ones like Kraken feeling the squeeze at this point. It will definitely be interesting to see how this all plays out over time going forward into 2021!