'We have made no decision at all to delist assets:' Coinbase Chief Legal Officer

Companies • June 7, 2023, 3:49PM EDT

UPDATED: October 2, 2023, 10:19AM EDT

Quick Take

Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewel told The Block that the firm hasn’t yet decided whether to delist any assets.
The stance comes a day after the SEC sued Coinbase for allegedly violating security regulations.
After the SEC sued crypto exchange rival Binance a day earlier, the firm’s U.S. arm pulled about 100 of its trading pairs.

Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewel says the firm has not yet decided whether it will delist any assets from the crypto exchange in the wake of the lawsuit its facing from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

"To address the question of whether or not we're going to delist any of these assets, of course we're always looking at new facts, new information, new allegations to understand whether or not our previous analysis was incorrect," Grewel says in a forthcoming episode of The Scoop. "But as I sit here today, we have made no decision at all to delist assets, and we remain confident in our original analysis."

Grewel's comments come after Coinbase was sued by the SEC on June 6 over allegations that it violated U.S. securities rules by operating as a broker, exchange and clearing agency without registering as such.

The SEC had sued the rival crypto exchange Binance and its CEO Changpeng 'CZ' Zhao on June 5. The firm's American arm Binance.US opted to pull about 100 trading pairs and suspend its OTC Trading Portal on June 7 in response.

For now, it seems Coinbase will not follow suit.

"We believe we are operating not just a lawful, but an extraordinarily positive and productive business. And so until we are convinced that anything that we do is in violation of law, we're going to continue to run our business as usual," Grewel said.

About Authors

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.

Frank Chaparro is Host of The Scoop podcast and Director of Special Projects. He also writes a biweekly newsletter. Chaparro started his career at Business Insider, where he specialized in the intersection of digital assets and Wall Street, market structure, and financial technology. Soon after joining Business Insider out of Fordham University, Chaparro was interviewing top finance and tech executives, including billionaire Mark Cuban, “Flash Boys” star Brad Katsuyama, Cboe Global Markets CEO Ed Tilly, and New York Stock Exchange President Tom Farley. In 2018, he become a sought after reporter in the crypto world, interviewing luminaries such as Tyler Winklevoss, the cofounder of Gemini, Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Circle, and Fundstrat head Tom Lee. For inquiries or tips, email [email protected].