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Coinbase Case Dropped by U.S. SEC as Agency Reverses Crypto Stance

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Coinbase has been freed from its protracted legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as the agency agreed to drop the case that’s been among the industry’s core fights in federal court.

Though the SEC’s intention to agree to shut down the legal dispute had already gone public when the U.S. crypto exchange announced the deal last week, the commissioners had to cast a formal vote to ask a federal judge to throw the switch. The dismissal was done in such a way that the regulator can’t change its mind later.

«It’s time for the commission to rectify its approach and develop crypto policy in a more transparent manner,» SEC Acting Chair Mark Uyeda said in a statement. SEC lawyers already filed a motion to dismiss the case

Dropping this main case doesn’t free the SEC from other Coinbase legal matters, including the company’s petition to force the agency to establish crypto rules and Coinbase’s pursuit of internal documents in the exchange’s ongoing work to reveal the regulator’s private deliberations on how to approach digital assets.

But this enforcement case was the top legal concern for the U.S. public company, and it sought to elevate the central legal questions of what makes a crypto security and when (and how) a digital assets exchange should register with the agency. Those fundamental questions still await answers that must now be provided by the U.S. Congress.

Once the SEC’s previous leadership departed — especially the crypto skeptic chair, Gary Gensler — the temporary chair elevated by President Donald Trump, Mark Uyeda, began overhauling the agency’s legal officials and its stance on digital assets. Uyeda named fellow Republican Commissioner Hester Peirce to run the agency’s crypto task force, and both of them were vocal critics of the way Gensler approached the industry.

The digital assets sector didn’t have to wait for the confirmation of Paul Atkins, Trump’s pick to permanently run the agency. Both Uyeda and Peirce served as his counsels when he was a commissioner at the SEC, so they’re widely expected to be on a course he’ll maintain. So far, that course has seen a wave of abandoned crypto investigations and dropped cases, including against Robinhood, Gemini and ConsenSys’s MetaMask, and pauses of matters involving Tron and Binance.

The regulator is no longer maintaining the interpretation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s so-called Howey test that it said had indicated many crypto projects qualified as securities.

The SEC’s changed view on Coinbase, which CoinDesk was first to report on last week, will cause the exchange to shift its Washington focus toward Congress and legislation, Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal told CoinDesk in a previous interview. The company is among the digital assets businesses that led the creation and deployment of the Fairshake PAC in the 2004 elections, collectively devoting more than $160 million to an effort to elect crypto-friendly candidates to office. Now Coinbase is seeking to get a return on that investment with regulations that it considers favorable.

The Fairshake PAC, which shook up the campaign-finance world with its outsized corporate spending levels, is still at it, dabbling in special elections as it prepares for the 2026 cycle.

Read More: SEC Poised to Drop Coinbase Lawsuit, Marking Big Moment for U.S. Crypto

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Canary Capital Files for Tron ETF With Staking Capabilities

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Canary Capital is looking to launch an exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracking the price of Tron’s native token, TRX, according to a filing.

The hedge fund submitted a Form S-1 for the Canary Staked TRX ETF with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday. As the name suggests, the fund — if approved — would stake portions of its holdings.

This would be done through third-party providers, with BitGo acting as custodian for the assets. The fund would track TRX’s spot price using CoinDesk Indices calculations.

A proposed ticker as well as the management fee for the product have not been shared yet.

Issuers had initially filed applications for spot ethereum (ETH) ETFs with the staking feature included but removed them in an amended filing later in order to receive approval from the SEC on their proposals.

While the SEC under former Chair Gary Gensler was strictly against staking, issuers have grown more hopeful that they will be able to add the feature to their spot ether funds, among others, with the appointment of crypto-friendly Chair Paul Atkins.

A decision on a February request from Grayscale to allow staking in the Grayscale Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHE) and the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust ETF (ETH) was postponed by the regulator just a few days ago.

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Feds Mistakenly Order Estonian HashFlare Fraudsters to Self-Deport Ahead of Sentencing

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Just four months ahead of their criminal sentencing for operating a $577 million cryptocurrency mining Ponzi scheme, the two Estonian founders of HashFlare were seemingly mistakenly ordered to self-deport by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — an instruction that directly contradicted a court order for the men to remain in Washington state until they are sentenced in August.

In a joint letter to the court last week, lawyers for Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin told District Judge Robert Lasnik of the Western District of Washington that both men had received “disturbing communications” from DHS ordering them to leave the country immediately.

“It is time for you to leave the United States,” an email to Potapenko and Turogin dated April 11 read. “DHS is terminating your parole. Do not attempt to remain in the United States — the federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately.”

The email, included with the letter filed last week, threatened both men with “criminal prosecution, civil fines, and penalties and any other lawful options available to the federal government” if they stayed in the country. It resembles emails that undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens alike have received over the past few days.

Ironically, Potapenko and Turogin are not in the U.S. of their own volition — they were extradited from their native Estonia at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice in 2022 on an 18-count indictment tied to their HashFlare scheme. Though they initially pleaded not guilty to all charges, in February they both pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and agreed to forfeit over $400 million in assets. They have both been in the Seattle area on bond since last July.

“Although there is nothing Ivan and Sergei would want more than to immediately go home, they understood that they are also under Court order to remain in King County,” wrote Mark Bini, a partner at Reed Smith LLP and lead counsel for Potenko, wrote in the pair’s joint letter to the court. Bini did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.

In his letter, Bini said DHS’s emails had caused both Potapenko and Turogin «significant anxiety.”

“We and our clients have all seen recent news. Immigration authorities make mistakes, and individuals who should not be in custody end up in custody, sometimes even deported to places where they should not be deported,” Bini wrote.

Six days after Bini’s letter to the judge, the DOJ filed its own letter with the court saying that prosecutors had coordinated with DHS’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division and secured a year-long deferral to the self-deportation order.

“This should provide ample time for the sentencing to take place,” the prosecution’s letter said.

DHS did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.

Potapenko and Turogin are slated to be sentenced on August 14 in Seattle. Their lawyers have said that they will request to be sentenced to time served, meaning no additional time in prison, and to be sent home to Estonia “immediately.”

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CoinDesk Weekly Recap: EigenLayer, Kraken, Coinbase, AWS

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Following last week’s tariff-caused drama, this was a relatively quiet week in crypto. Bitcoin remained stable around $84k. The CoinDesk 20, which tracks about 80% of the market, was up about 4% in the last seven days — i.e. nothing historic.

Still, plenty happened. On Tuesday, much of crypto went offline because of a tech issue at AWS, showing how the decentralized economy isn’t always that decentralized. Shaurya Malwa reported the news early. Bitcoin and other major cryptos slipped on bad news for Nvidia, Omkar Godbole reported.

Mantra, a project focused on real world assets, lost 90% of its value. Explanations varied (the company said it was due to “force liquidations” exchanges).

Meanwhile, EigenLayer, a restaking leader, rolled out a “slashing” feature meant to address security concerns (Sam Kessler reported). OKX, a major exchange, announced plans to set up in California following a $500 million settlement with the SEC over claims it operated previously in the U.S. without a money transmitter license. Cheyenne Ligon had that story.

In less good news, Kraken laid off “hundreds” of staff ahead of an expected IPO. And Coinbase became embroiled in a “front running controversy” linked to a curiously named token on its Base L2. Privacy advocates reacted with alarm to rumors that Binance was about to delist Zcash following a long decline in the value of privacy coins.

In D.C. news, Jesse Hamilton reported on a new wave of crypto lobbyists flooding the capital. Some asked if there are now too many trade groups and whether they really all could be effective.

Friends With Benefits, a buzzy social club for creative technologists, launched a new program to build Web3 products for music, film, publishing and other fun activities. (I wrote that one.)

Of course, there was plenty happening in the economy and markets (Trump’s disgust for Fed chair Powell fed into the unease). But, in crypto, it was pretty much business as usual. Fortunes won, fortunes lost, fortunes deferred.

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