America’s largest crypto exchange Coinbase hopes to soon offer trading services for tokenized equities, according to a Reuters interview with the firm’s chief legal officer published Tuesday.
Paul Grewal said that it was a “huge priority” for Coinbase to secure SEC approval to allow such assets to trade. In an X post afterwards, Grewal said that he was merely echoing a Coinbase position made public this spring.
“We’ve been saying since earlier this year that [the SEC] should enable markets to unlock tokenized securities,” he wrote.
Exciting? Yes. Important? Absolutely. But breaking news? Not exactly. We’ve been saying since earlier this year that @SECGov should enable markets to unlock tokenized securities. Tokenized debt, equity, and investment funds present an opportunity for tailored regulation for…
— paulgrewal.eth (@iampaulgrewal) June 17, 2025
Decrypt reached out to Coinbase for additional comment, but a spokesperson pointed to Grewal’s X post as its comment on the matter.
If approved, equities such as tech stocks would be tokenized and offered via blockchain networks, potentially leading to lower transaction costs and 24-7 trading, Grewal said. A tokenized stock is a digital asset that represents equity in a company.
Decrypt in April reported that SEC regulators at a digital assets roundtable said that the agency would be open to a regulatory sandbox for crypto exchanges to experiment with new offerings. This could include things like tokenized stocks, Acting SEC Chair Mark Uyeda said at the time.
Commissioner Hester Peirce, who heads up the SEC’s new crypto task force, said that “participating firms could see what works and what doesn’t, technically and commercially.”
Just last week, SEC Chair Paul Atkins affirmed that perspective, noting plans for an “innovation exemption” to let DeFi builders experiment on-chain with new products. The news was well received by traders, as Ethereum DeFi tokens broadly rose in value following the comments.
The SEC under the new Trump administration has taken a more crypto-friendly stance. Under Democratic ex-president Joe Biden’s leadership, the regulator went after top crypto firms with lawsuits for allegedly breaking securities laws.
But since U.S. President Donald Trump took charge on Jan. 20, the SEC has scrapped a number of those lawsuits. Trump campaigned on a ticket to help the digital asset space and received financial backing from industry leaders.
Coinbase isn’t the only American exchange planning to offer tokenized stocks. Kraken in May said it would soon offer over 50 U.S.-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds to overseas customers using the Solana blockchain.
Edited by James Rubin
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Two of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, Gemini and Coinbase, are set to receive licenses that would permit them to operate across the entire European Union.
Reuters reports that Gemini, owned and co-founded by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, is on the verge of receiving an operational license from Malta, after the small Mediterranean nation granted licenses to rival exchanges OKX and Crypto.com in January this year.
Meanwhile, Luxembourg is reportedly in the final stages of approving a license for Coinbase. The company is also planning to open an office in the country later this year, where it plans to employ at least 20 staff.
This is potentially a much more significant move than it would have been just a few years ago. Following the introduction of the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation (MiCA) in April 2023, a license to operate in one EU member state grants the holder the right to operate in all 27, gaining access to the pan-European market in the process.
This is due to a process known as “passporting,” and it means other European nations lose the ability to block Crypto-Asset Service Providers, or CASPs, once they’re licensed to operate in another member state. But there is a carve out for instances where there’s a firm legal basis.
Regulators voice concerns
Some EU regulators raised suspicions about the nature of these types of related rapid approvals. One unidentified senior regulatory official told Reuters that the European Securities and Markets Authority, or ESMA, was concerned about accepting licenses granted in countries where regulators have fewer staff. ESMA is currently analyzing Malta’s licensing process, with a report expected to be released.
A spokesperson for the Malta Financial Services Authority said its ability to grant approvals quickly is due to “in-depth understanding acquired over these years” and added that it has strict standards regarding the prevention of money laundering.
Concerns were also expressed about Luxembourg’s decision to grant a license to Coinbase, with one anonymous source highlighting the relatively small size of Coinbase’s planned footprint in the country. Luxembourg’s officials did not comment on the potential approval.
Peter Curk, CEO of UK crypto portfolio management platform ICONOMI, told Decrypt that though the MiCA was originally designed to harmonize crypto oversight, “if regulatory capacity differs across member states, we risk a ‘race to the bottom’ in standards, diluting consumer protection and cross‑border trust.”
“Europe’s challenge is balancing agility with the depth of scrutiny,” said Curk. “The debate isn’t just about licenses, it’s about the EU’s collective reputation in digital finance.”
“National competition is healthy, but not at the expense of regulatory cohesion,” he added, suggesting that granting EMSA more oversight powers would signal high collective standards on behalf of the EU and improve MiCA’s credibility in the world of finance.
The CEO suggested that if EU member states treat MiCA as “a license arbitrage opportunity,” they risk ultimately sending business to other regions like the U.S..
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
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Coinbase was made aware in January of a customer data breach involving its third-party contractor TaskUs months before publicly disclosing the incident, Reuters reported Monday, citing six sources familiar with the matter.
According to five former TaskUs employees, the breach was traced to an India-based TaskUs support agent who had been photographing her work computer screen with a phone.
The employee and an alleged accomplice were suspected of selling Coinbase user information to hackers in exchange for bribes.
“We immediately reported this activity to the client,” TaskUs told Reuters, adding that it had terminated two employees for illegal access and believed the breach was part of a wider, coordinated campaign targeting Coinbase and other service providers.
Decrypt has approached Coinbase and TaskUs for comment.
Coinbase disclosed the breach in an SEC filing on May 14 and followed up with a blog post on May 15.
The company said hackers obtained customer names, addresses, masked bank details, and identity documents via compromised support staff. No funds or passwords were taken. On May 11, Coinbase received a $20 million Bitcoin ransom demand, prompting it to go public with the information.
It additionally said that the threat actor had obtained the information by paying multiple contractors or employees in support roles for information from internal Coinbase systems and that “these instances of such personnel accessing data without business need were independently detected by the Company’s security monitoring in the previous months.”
Reuters reported that at least part of the breach was linked to TaskUs, a U.S. outsourcing firm with over 61,000 employees across 12 countries.
“They then tried to extort Coinbase for $20 million to cover this up. We said no,” the company wrote. CEO Brian Armstrong responded by offering a $20 million bounty for information leading to the arrest of the attackers. “We are not going to pay your ransom,” he said in a video statement.
The company said the breach affected less than 1% of its users. Coinbase has since cut ties with TaskUs and other overseas agents involved in the incident and claims to have strengthened internal controls.
The breach sparked a shareholder lawsuit filed May 22 in federal court in Pennsylvania. Investor Brady Nessler accused Coinbase of violating securities laws by failing to disclose the breach promptly and alleged the company also concealed prior regulatory issues.
Coinbase’s stock dropped 7% following the disclosure but has since rebounded, bolstered by its inclusion in the S&P 500.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
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