A newly filed class-action complaint alleges that Coinbase violated US securities laws.

The complaint, which was filed in the Northern District of California’s San Francisco division on Friday, claims that the top US crypto exchange has been operating as “part of a shadowy crypto ecosystem operating just outside of the law.”

“Its entire business model has been built upon a lie and a dream: the lie is that ‘we do not sell securities,’ and the dream is that, knowing it would eventually be caught in the lie, ‘it is better to ask for forgiveness than permission.’

Coinbase has knowingly, intentionally, and repeatedly violated state securities laws since it began doing business.”

The complainants accuse the exchange of offering numerous unregistered “digital asset securities,” including the layer-1 blockchain projects Solana (SOL), NEAR Protocol (NEAR), Algorand (ALGO), Stellar (XLM) and Tezos (XTZ); the blockchain scaling solution Polygon (MATIC); the decentralized exchange Uniswap (UNI); and the Ethereum (ETH)-based virtual reality platform Decentraland (MANA).

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has also accused Coinbase of violating securities laws, launching a lawsuit against the exchange in June 2023.

Coinbase has argued that trading digital assets doesn’t qualify as an “investment contract” under the Howey Test, an assessment created by the Supreme Court more than 90 years ago to determine whether assets should be classified as securities.

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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any losses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.

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The chief executive of financial giant VanEck reportedly says that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will likely reject bids to launch Ethereum (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Though many finance institutions had their bids for Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs approved earlier this year, VanEck CEO Jan van Eck told CNBC in an interview that he doesn’t think the regulatory agency will greenlight ETH ETFs.

“We were the first to file as well for Ethereum in the U.S., and we and [Ark Invest CEO] Cathy Wood, are kind of the first in line for May, I guess, to probably be rejected…

The way the legal process goes is the regulators will give you comments on your application, and that happened for weeks and weeks before the Bitcoin ETFs – and right now, pins are dropping as far as Ethereum is concerned.”

The SEC approved BTC ETFs in January after years of rejecting them following a court order to reconsider the applications. ETFs grant traders exposure to an asset without them having to actually purchase it.

In March, the regulatory agency announced that it needed more time to consider the possibility of an ETF based on Ethereum, and would be delaying its decision by 60 days until May.

However, some crypto firms – such as top US-based crypto exchange Coinbase and blockchain software provider Consensys – are urging the SEC to approve ETH ETFs, saying that Ethereum’s cybersecurity and resilience to fraud is even greater than that of Bitcoin’s.

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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any loses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.

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The research branch of top US-based crypto exchange platform Coinbase says that going forward, investors are likely to aggressively purchase Bitcoin (BTC) when it dips.

In a new blog post, Coinbase Institutional says that gold is a winner this cycle due to rising economic and geopolitical concerns.

According to Coinbase, the success of gold can be attributed to both the threat of inflation and the anticipation that the Federal Reserve will begin its rate-cutting cycle.

“In this environment, gold has been the largest winner, printing new highs amidst increased central bank buying, heightened geopolitical risks, and reflation concerns.

What makes gold’s performance notable is that its appreciation has generally been associated with both Fed rate cuts as well as higher inflation.

Given the market’s recent hawkish views on rate cuts, we think gold’s performance signals an overweighting on inflation relative to Fed rate changes as well as an overall belief that certain inflation bumps could materialize more problematically than anticipated.”

Looking at Bitcoin, Coinbase Institutional says that since the top crypto asset by market cap is generally being accepted as “digital gold,” the market can expect BTC to be more aggressively accumulated during periods of correction.

“In our view, Bitcoin’s increased acceptance as a form of ‘digital gold’ could enable demand from a new subset of investors in this market regime. As a result, we think dips are likely to be more aggressively bought compared to previous cycles, even as volatility persists during price discovery.”

Coinbase also says it continues to be bullish on the crypto king as it benefits from the demand coming from the spot market BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) while the network gears up for the reduction of new BTC supply through the halving.

“In our view, the capital unlocked by the ETFs perhaps represents the most fundamental shift in market structure between the previous 2020-21 cycle and today

These capital unlocks, coupled with the upcoming Bitcoin halving (estimated to occur on April 20th-21st subject to variations in network hash rate) and other positive catalysts, make us still largely constructive in our view throughout Q2.”

At time of writing, Bitcoin is trading for $69,283.

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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any loses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.

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