Coinbase calls for new crypto regulator

In a blog, Coinbase chief policy officer Faryar Shirzad says that while digital assets have quickly become a mainstream part of the financial market ecosystem, “laws drafted in the 1930s to facilitate effective oversight of our financial system could not contemplate this technological revolution”.

The crypto giant’s answer is set out in a paper called Digital Asset Policy Proposal: Safeguarding America’s Financial Leadership (dApp).

The paper calls for digital assets to be regulated under a separate framework from the existing financial system and for there to be one federal regulator to do this. This new framework should have three goals: enhance transparency; protect against fraud and market manipulation; and promote efficiency and market resiliency. Finally, the new regulator should promote interoperability and fair competition.

Coinbase has had a spiky relationship with regulators, most notably the SEC, which the firm’s CEO Brian Armstrong recently accused of some “really sketchy behavior,” adding that it refused to meet with him in Washington earlier this year.

Last month, the company abandoned its planned interest-earning product two weeks after the revealing that the SEC was threatening to sue over the issue.