Cumberland responds to SEC lawsuit: Will not change business operations or assets due to lawsuit, will firmly defend itself

Odaily News After being sued by the U.S. SEC, digital asset market maker Cumberland responded in a statement: "Today, we have become the latest target of the U.S. SEC's enforcement-first approach to stifle innovation and prevent legitimate companies from engaging in digital assets. This is despite bipartisan opposition to this approach at a recent House Financial Services Committee hearing. At the hearing, the SEC was called a rogue agency, accused of failing to cooperate with Congress and abusing its power. In our case, the problem is that the SEC believes that some of our transactions involving certain crypto assets are securities transactions. At this point, we have had five years of sincere discussions with the SEC. We have shared dozens of written summaries and statements, produced thousands of pages of materials, and subjected our senior management and compliance staff to lengthy interviews. Today's allegations are the first time the SEC has outlined the specific transactions in dispute. The SEC claims that these transactions require us to register as a broker-dealer. Despite our strong opposition, we took this step and acquired a registered broker-dealer in 2019. It was not until then - despite Chairman Gensler's call to "come in and register" - that we were told that we could only use our own broker-dealers to trade BTC or ETH (both commodities, not subject to the SEC) Jurisdiction). This naturally raises questions about whether the guidance to come in and register was provided in good faith. We will not be making any changes to our business operations or the assets for which we provide liquidity as a result of this action by the SEC. We are confident in our strong compliance framework and strict adherence to all known rules and regulations, even if they have been a moving target (ETH was claimed to be a security not long ago). We have demonstrated before that the company is willing to protect itself from regulators exercising their power in a way that harms rather than benefits the market. We did this when Chairman Gensler was Chairman of the CFTC, and the court's charges against DRW were based solely on a 'flat earth'-style conviction. This time, the SEC's approach appears to be a game of 'Catch-22', and the ability to 'come in and register' is just a mirage. We are ready to defend ourselves again. " Earlier news, the US SEC sued Cumberland DRW, claiming that it operated as an unregistered securities dealer. The indictment information shows that since March 2018, Cumberland has been acting as an unregistered trader to buy and sell crypto assets as securities for its own account. It currently operates a crypto asset securitization business worth more than $2 billion, violating the registration requirements of the U.S. federal securities laws designed to protect investors.