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by chatmasta 1174 days ago
Coinbase's whole shtick is to be the law-abiding crypto exchange, so it's kind of alarming to see the sudden SEC action against them, when their entire value is based on the goal of working in good-faith with regulators to bring crypto into the mainstream economy.
1 comments
JumpCrisscross 1174 days ago
> when their entire value is based on the goal of working in good-faith with regulators

Armstrong spends his day tweeting insults at the SEC. I know Gemini and Coinbase positioned themselves, to users and investors, as regulatory friendly and compliant. But they didn’t behave the way compliance-obsessed firms do.

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chatmasta 1174 days ago
> Armstrong spends his day tweeting insults at the SEC.

I don't follow Armstrong on Twitter. Can you cite some examples? I took a brief look through his Tweets mentioning "SEC" [0] and didn't see any Tweet that a reasonable person would consider an "insult."

Also, the rate of his Tweets containing "SEC" seems much lower than what you'd expect from someone who "spends his day" tweeting at the SEC - surely such a person would mention the SEC in their Tweets more than a few times per year.

[0] https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3A%40brian_armstrong%20SEC...

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JumpCrisscross 1174 days ago
The "really sketchy behavior" rant came to mind [1]. This isn't someone who's trying to build regulatory relationships. It's someone who wants to look like he has them. (Similar to SBF's political donations not resembling someone who wants to build political goodwill. Just someone who wants to appear as much.)

Note: I'm not arguing Armstrong had no points. But if you're going to air out your regulatory complaints ex ante and in public, you're not playing in the good-and-compliant lane.

[1] https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/14354392917153587...

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chatmasta 1174 days ago
Based on the content of his Tweets, many of which are complaining about lack of communication from SEC, I assume he didn't start by airing the complaints in public.

They're also a public regulatory agency, so I'm skeptical of the premise that it's somehow wrong to communicate publicly with them. Arguably he has a duty to his shareholders to do so, or at least to let his shareholders know the status of pending or current enforcement actions against Coinbase.

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JumpCrisscross 1174 days ago
> I'm skeptical of the premise that it's somehow wrong to communicate publicly with them

It's not. But it's not "working in good-faith with regulators." Coinbase has been antagonistic with the SEC from the outset.

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renewiltord 1174 days ago
The rant seems to be ex post, though. It is after he received notification that his company would be sued if they launched the product and after they wouldn't explain the rules after he asked.

It's not like he jumped right into it. And especially notable is that they let other exchanges operate the same feature.

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