First Mover Americas: Circle Argues Stablecoins Aren’t Securities in Response to SEC’s Binance Lawsuit

This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.

Stablecoin issuer Circle has intervened in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s case against major crypto exchange Binance, arguing that financial trading laws shouldn’t spread to stablecoins whose value is tied to other assets. In June, regulators charged Binance with multiple legal violations for facilitating trades in cryptocurrencies, such as Solana’s SOL, Cardano’s ADA and the Binance stablecoin BUSD, which the SEC alleged constituted unregistered securities. That’s become one of the most major cases in crypto right now, as the world’s biggest crypto exchange – alongside rivals like Coinbase – seek to argue that crypto isn’t caught by existing heavy-handed U.S. financial laws.

Asset manager Valkyrie started buying ether (ETH) futures contracts, after getting approval to convert its existing bitcoin futures exchange traded fund (ETF) to a two-for-one investment vehicle. “Today, the Valkyrie Bitcoin Strategy ETF (Nasdaq: $BTF) began adding exposure to Ether futures contracts, making it the first U.S. ETF to provide exposure to Ether and Bitcoin futures contracts under one wrapper,” a spokesperson told CoinDesk in an email statement. Valkyrie was first to get approval for ETH futures ETF among other firms, as it “supplemented its prospectus and updated risk disclosures related to Ether futures,” said the spokesperson.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN) announced this week that it had received regulatory approval in Bermuda to list perpetual futures to users outside of the United States. The move comes as no surprise, after Coinbase acquired a license in Bermuda to operate a spot exchange back in April following a gung-ho approach from U.S. regulators, with the ultimate intention of rolling out a perpetual futures platform. Perpetual futures are a type of cash-settled derivatives contract that allow traders to “long” or “short” an underlying asset with leverage. Instead of the contract expiring every month or quarter, perpetual swap traders pay a funding rate that represents the difference between the mark and index price of the underlying asset, this ensures that pricing stays efficient.

– Lyllah Ledesma