U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission dismisses Coinbase civil enforcement action with prejudice and pivots crypto policy work to the Crypto Task Force

The U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission settled its case against Coinbase by dismissing the civil enforcement action with prejudice. In a statement, Commissioner Hester M. Peirce framed the dismissal as part of a shift away from regulating the crypto industry primarily through enforcement actions and toward a policy-led process under the Commission’s newly formed Crypto Task Force. Peirce criticised the prior Commission’s “regulation-by-enforcement” approach, including what she described as a sweeping and difficult-to-decipher application of the Howey test to crypto. She noted the Coinbase case relied on registration charges tied to the platform’s listing of tokens captured by that analysis, and said the broader strategy left issuers and market participants to infer the Commission’s views from complaints in crypto-related litigation. The statement also stressed that the Commission, not staff, is responsible for decisions to bring or settle cases, and that under the new directive the policy divisions will lead public engagement to build a workable crypto framework while enforcement remains available for appropriate cases.