Coinbase Vs SEC: Ripple CTO Shares Take on Coinbase Amicus Brief

The legal battle between American publicly listed trading platform Coinbase Global Inc and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is gradually becoming the major focus of industry observers. Riding on this growing interest, Ripple CTO, David Schwartz recently shared his take on the bouts of Amicus submissions from stakeholders in support of the trading platform.

Reactions to Amicus Briefs Supporting Coinbase

Surprisingly, Coinbase Exchange has garnered a lot of support from industry giants and scholars in the legal profession who have filed an Amicus submission on its behalf. 

Besides Senator Cynthia Lummis, industry giants including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Paradigm as well as six law professors from Yale, the University of Chicago, the University of California Los Angeles, Fordham, Boston University, and Widener University have all shown their support.

While the arguments presented by these Amicus Curiae have done good justice to weakening the SEC’s securities claims, experts like Schwartz have also pointed out some flaws in the argument. One of the flaws noted relates to the poor analysis of the holding in Joiner.

“I think the weakest point in that brief is that they don’t do a good job of addressing the holding in Joiner. But at most, Joiner says that if a reasonable buyer could have thought that they had enforceable, contractual rights, that can be sufficient,” Schwartz said in his tweet to the conversation initiated by MetaLawMan.

The Joiner being referred to is the first Supreme Court case that properly interpreted the definition of an investment contract.

The Odds for Coinbase

Different legal experts have weighed in on how the US SEC has no case against Coinbase. Infact, the fact that the SEC’s claims that the trading platform is considered weak accounts for one of the reasons why the XRP holder’s lawyer chose not to file his own Amicus Brief in the Coinbase vs SEC case.

Most people believe the trading of digital currencies on secondary platforms is not securities, a claim that was drawn from the XRP ruling from Judge Analisa Torres. The odds appear to be in Coinbase’s favor and observers believe the trading exchange might win the case against the regulator.