U.S. President Donald Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission has delivered a significant victory to the cryptocurrency industry by agreeing to drop a major lawsuit against Coinbase, a crypto exchange platform company that spent heavily on the 2024 election and donated a million dollars to President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The SEC’s decision, announced Friday by Coinbase’s chief legal officer, marks the latest evidence of the nascent industry’s growing political influence and the current administration’s readiness to ditch corporate enforcement efforts. The New York Times noted Friday that the SEC under the Biden administration sued Coinbase in 2023 “on the grounds that the digital currencies sold on its platform constituted unregistered securities that put consumers at risk of financial harm.”

Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement that “the SEC abandonment of its case against Coinbase is proof positive that the crypto industry’s flood of campaign spending has paid off.”

“The now-abandoned lawsuit against Coinbase involved the most basic assertion of SEC authority: Coinbase cryptocurrency offerings are actually securities and must be registered and regulated as such,” said........

© Truthout