SEC issues Robinhood Crypto with Wells Notice, citing alleged securities violations

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UPDATED: May 6, 2024, 9:20AM EDT

Quick Take

Robinhood Markets said that the SEC has issued its crypto unit with a Wells Notice.
The SEC told the company that it is anticipating filing an enforcement action over alleged securities violations.

Robinhood Crypto, the crypto unit of the brokerage firm Robinhood Markets, received a Wells Notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on May 4.

The exchange said the SEC staff has made a preliminary determination to recommend an enforcement action against the crypto unit, alleging securities violations, according to a Form 8-K filed today.

“After years of good faith attempts to work with the SEC for regulatory clarity including our well-known attempt to ‘come in and register,’ we are disappointed that the agency has decided to issue a Wells Notice related to our U.S. crypto business,” said Dan Gallagher, Chief Legal, Compliance and Corporate Affairs Officer, Robinhood Markets, Inc, in a statement. “We firmly believe that the assets listed on our platform are not securities and we look forward to engaging with the SEC to make clear just how weak any case against Robinhood Crypto would be on both the facts and the law.”

Last year, Robinhood Markets said it had received an investigative subpoena from the SEC related to listings of cryptocurrencies. Robinhood Crypto supports over a dozen of cryptocurrencies for trading, including bitcoin, ether, dogecoin and shiba inu.

Last month, decentralized crypto exchange Uniswap received a Wells Notice from the SEC. “It’s been clear for a while that rather than working to create clear, informed rules, the SEC has decided to focus on attacking long-time good actors like Uniswap and Coinbase,” Uniswap founder Hayden Adams said at the time.

Ethereum development studio Consensys also received a Wells Notice from the SEC in the same month. Consensys later moved to sue the SEC, saying that regulating ether as a security would jeopardize the U.S.'s ability to use Ethereum and other blockchains. “The implications would stretch far beyond digital asset trading, jeopardizing the future of countless new innovations, products and U.S. jobs that this next generation of the Internet will unleash,” Consensys said at the time.

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