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🏠 The SEC Is Taking No Prisoners

🏠 The SEC Is Taking No Prisoners

SEC v Coinbase

Stephen Flanders
June 09, 2023

Gm. The Terminator. Rambo. Gary Gensler.

🏠 CRYPTO

World War Crypto

We don’t know what happened to SEC Chair Gary Gensler last weekend, but whatever it was, keep us the hell away from it. That man woke up on Monday and chose absolute violence. And that’s bad bad news for crypto.

First, he woke up and sued the largest crypto exchange Binance for being an unregistered securities exchange, mishandling customer funds, and a whole host of other things. We’re not going to cover this today because, honestly, they are probably screwed.

The SEC’s second act of violence this week is the more interesting case: a lawsuit against Coinbase.

The Lawsuit

Coinbase is America’s largest crypto exchange, and they want to follow the rules like that annoying kid who reminds the teacher you had homework. But that has not spared them from the SEC’s wrath. For months, the SEC has attacked Coinbase for listing securities, their staking products, and everything else under the sun.

That offensive culminated this week in a lawsuit in which Coinbase is being accused with:

Operating as an unregistered broker, exchange, and clearing agency.
Federal security law violations from Coinbase’s Prime, Wallet, and staking products.
Providing trading securities for multiple illegal securities.

Make It Make Sense

It’s a laundry list of serious charges, but in Coinbase’s eyes, the suit is positively ridiculous on multiple levels:

Coinbase has tried to register with the SEC countless times, and the SEC turns them back every time.
The SEC reviewed Coinbase’s business when they approved their 2021 IPO. So what changed between then and now?
The Feds literally use Coinbase to sell their seized crypto. So, according to the SEC, the Feds are using an illegal exchange. Who watches the watchers? Apparently, the SEC.

In any case, Coinbase is excited. Not because they are some psychos who enjoy the hellish pain that is legal paperwork, but because this case will finally provide some clarity to where crypto stands in America. In other words: is it a security or commodity?

We will have the answer by the time this case is over.

Why should I care? If you’re a crypto bro, you better pull out the prayers and the sage for a Coinbase win.

🏠 VENTURE

Sequoia Splits Up

Sequoia, one of the largest and most prestigious venture capital firms, is splitting up. Instead of one big happy family, Sequoia will have three separate regional firms each with its own name and branding: one in America, one in India, and one in China.

The stated reason for the split is that one cheated on the other it is “increasingly complex to run a global decentralized investment business”.

But, for many, this is just word salad. They believe the true reason is the rising tensions between the US and China.

Sequoia has been investing in Chinese tech startups since 2005, and as you’d expect from Sequoia, they’ve proven to be quite good at it. They even landed investments in Alibaba and ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.

But that was a different time. These days, China is a major competitor and TikTok is seen as a piece of spyware. President Biden is even considering an executive order that would limit the ability of VCs to invest in Chinese tech companies.

Not exactly the most conducive atmosphere for Sequoia to be plowing money into China, hence the split.

The Bottom Line: In today’s era of intense geopolitical tensions, expect to see more VCs lean into “American Dynamism” and less into overseas investments, especially in China.

🏃‍♀️ QUICKIES

What else is going on?

Instagram might be a vast pedophile network.
GPT-5 is still not in training.
Scientists are growing closer to developing artificial blood vessels.
Marc Andreessen really loves AI.

Stat: 50 meters: The distance that scientists successfully guided lightning for, a first of its kind. Nobody knows if it’s useful or not yet, but everybody agrees that it’s really damn cool.

Rabbit hole: Beware The Man Of Many Studies (Cremieux Recueil)

🤑 FUNDING FRIDAY

If you want a boring list of startup raises, look away now. If you want the 2 coolest raises of the week, then you’ve come to the right place.

🛩️ Oxccu

Flying is awesome, but flying is also not great for the environment. Oxccu addresses this by converting carbon dioxide and hydrogen into jet fuel, fixing two birds with one stone. It’s a creative solution, and they’ve raised a $22M Series A to develop it.

🧬 Kate Therapeutics

There are many complex genetic heart and muscle diseases that can’t be treated due to a lack of an effective delivery method. Kate Therapeutics is fixing this problem by developing a novel gene therapy medicinal delivery method. Exciting stuff, and apparently worthy of a $51M Series A.