Trade group accuses SEC of ‘stealthy’ overreach in Coinbase insider trading case

cointelegraph.com:

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has again been accused of overstepping its authority and unfairly labeling crypto assets as securities, this time in its insider trading case against ex-Coinbase employees.

In an amicus brief filing on Feb. 22, the U.S.-based Chamber of Digital Commerce argued the case should be dismissed as it represented an expansion of the SEC’s “regulation by enforcement” campaign and seeks to characterize secondary market transactions as securities transactions.

We have serious concerns about the SEC’s attempt to label these tokens as securities in the context of an enforcement action against third parties who had nothing to do with creating, distributing or marketing those assets. This is not a healthy policymaking process. Dismiss! https://t.co/06WAJ65Ckl

“This case represents a stealthy, yet dramatic and unprecedented effort to expand the SEC’s jurisdictional reach and threatens the health of the U.S. marketplace for digital assets,” wrote Perianne Boring, founder and CEO of the Chamber of Digital Commerce.

The Chamber highlighted the “SEC’s encroachment into the digital assets market” was never authorized by Congress, and noted in other Supreme Court cases it has been ruled that regulators must first be granted authority by Congress.

“By acting without Congressional authorization, [the SEC] continues to contribute to a chaotic regulatory environment, harming the very investors it is charged to protect,” it wrote on Twitter.

The Chamber also argued that in bringing claims of securities fraud, the SEC was essentially asking the court to uphold that secondary market trades in the nine digital assets mentioned in an insider trading case against a former Coinbase employee