Coinbase Asks Appeals Court to Say Crypto Trade Unlike Stock (1)

Coinbase Inc. asked the Second Circuit to say that digital token trades on its platform aren’t transactions governed under federal securities law.

“There is no more pressing issue in securities law today than the scope of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s authority to regulate secondary trades of digital assets,” Coinbase said in its petition docketed in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The appeals court could “clear away the cloud that currently hangs over the cryptocurrency market,” it said.

A Second Circuit decision finding that token trades aren’t securities transactions would speed the end of the SEC’s ...