Quote from the WSJ: "Armstrong has also become increasingly brash in the face of U.S. regulators’ effort to rein in the crypto industry. Armstrong spent significant time in Washington, D.C., last year lobbying for crypto legislation. He hired former lawmakers as advisers and donated more than $1 million of his personal wealth to a pro-crypto super political-action committee. The first test comes Wednesday when Coinbase will ask a federal court judge to dismiss the high-stakes lawsuit brought against the company last year by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The agency sued Coinbase in June for allegedly offering and listing unregistered securities, among other things. " .... Industry watchers say the request for dismissal is a long shot. The SEC has long argued that most crypto tokens are securities, a category that includes assets such as stocks and bonds. Selling securities to the broader public without registering them with the SEC makes the issuer liable for violating investor-protection laws. The agency says Coinbase traded at least 13 crypto assets that are securities and should have been registered with regulators before they were issued. Coinbase has called for U.S. regulators to draft clear rules for governing the crypto industry. It argues the SEC, under Gary Gensler, is taking an “enforcement-only approach” to set the law on a case-by-case basis. And that strategy hasn’t always worked: Gensler’s approval of the new bitcoin ETFs last week, prompted in large part by a legal setback in another lawsuit, was a notable loss for the agency. Assuming the judge allows the SEC’s suit to go forward, the company could litigate it into 2025 or longer before any trial is held, Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, said in an interview. “The case is very unlikely to be dismissed,” said Lisa Bragança, a lawyer who worked as an SEC enforcement branch chief. “Coinbase is saying that the types of coins it lists on its platform are not securities, and that is going to be very hard for them to prove.” https://www.wsj.com/finance/currenc...er-brian-armstrong-ce1617ce?mod=hp_listc_pos2