Coinbase’s CEO said the firm may move its headquarters to the United Kingdom if the regulatory progress in America remains stagnant.
Coinbase is on the brink of legal warfare with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to reach long-awaited clarity on how federal securities laws apply to the crypto industry, according to CEO Brian Armstrong.
Should the regulator situation not improve, the executive said the exchange would consider relocating away from the United States.
Will Coinbase Move Abroad?
In an interview with CNBC on Tuesday, Armstrong called out “certain regulators” for taking a “regulation by enforcement approach” to crypto in the US – a term he’s previously used to describe the SEC’s treatment of the industry. Given this aggressive approach, he admitted that Coinbase was already assessing other countries for potentially setting up new headquarters.
“The UK is actually a very good one for us,” said the CEO. The region, he noted, is Coinbase’s second-highest revenue country, and its leaders have expressed promising interest in turning the nation into a Web3 hub.
The CEO said that the SEC had never notified the exchange about what it could be doing better to remain compliant across 30+ meetings over the last year.
“I think we’re going to have to actually end up going to court to get the clarity we need and create the case law,” he said, referring to judicial precedent.
A Multi-Year Legal Battle
One of the SEC’s most high-profile, ongoing crypto industry lawsuits began with Ripple in December 2020, when the agency alleged that the company’s XRP token was an unregistered security. Armstrong said Coinbase is prepared for its own lawsuit with the agency to turn into a similar years-long debacle if that’s what it takes to get legal clarity.
“We never seek litigation but it seems, in this case, they have initiated it,” he added. “The law is on our side.”