SEC crypto cases will be ‘cancelled or terminated’ under Trump: Consensys CEO

The ongoing legal battle between crypto companies and US securities regulators could end when Donald Trump is elected as the 47th president of the United States, according to Consensus CEO Joe Lubin.

“So my guess is that, in a non-committal way, they're going to figure out a way to end or resolve the issues,” Lubin told Cointelegraph at DevCon 2024 in Thailand.

“Maybe not all the issues, maybe not all the elements of the issue, but I feel our industry will save hundreds of millions of dollars in the future,” he said.

Lubin's comments came after Trump won the November 5 presidential election. Trump's victory was hailed by the crypto industry due to his many pro-crypto promises during the campaign.

One promise in particular was to “fire” Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman and crypto critic Gary Gensler on the first day. There is also growing hope that Trump will fill his cabinet with “pro-crypto” individuals.

Trump is ‘moving with force'

“I think the Trump transition team is already moving aggressively,” he said. “Trump is a good politician, he takes the zeitgeist and runs with it, no matter what you say about him,” Lubin said before adding them.

This is a major victory for the crypto industry, especially in the US, as the SEC has been locked in ongoing legal battles with major crypto exchanges including Binance and Coinbase since December 2020, along with a back-and-forth lawsuit against Ripple.

Lubin touched on Consensus, which filed a lawsuit against the SEC and its five commissioners in April over claims the regulator planned to deregulate ETH as a security.

Allegations of collusion ‘lit a fire,' says Lubin.

“I think our lawsuit lit a fire. That fire was lit by legislation,” he said. In the filing, Consensys alleges that the SEC has orchestrated enforcement actions to “manage the cryptocurrency of the future” by planning to regulate Ether as a security.

According to Lubin, the SEC was trying to argue that Ethereum 2.0 is different from the “old” Ether.

“I think what they're trying to do is that Ether is something different than Ether under Ethereum 2.0, and that old Ether, well, whatever Bill Hinman said, we don't care. Call it a commodity, but this new Ether is obviously secure.”

On September 19, a Texas federal judge dismissed Consensus' lawsuit against the SEC and its five commissioners.

Related: Crypto companies push for SEC changes, crypto out of court

A separate case filed by the SEC against Consensys shortly after the initial filing is still pending.

The SEC said the company was acting as an unregistered broker and engaging in the unregistered offering and sale of securities through MetaMask Swaps.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong recently said that the next chairman of the SEC should apologize to Americans for the damage the agency has done to the crypto space.

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