According to Foresight News, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a motion asking a federal judge to dismiss the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase's argument that "cryptocurrency transactions do not meet the definition of investment contracts." The focus of the debate is how the judge decides the correct way to interpret the key precedent in securities law known as the Howey test.

Previously, the U.S. SEC sued Coinbase in June, claiming that the U.S. company failed to register as a securities exchange with the market regulator. Coinbase dismissed the case and asked the judge to make a preliminary ruling that cryptocurrency transactions are different from investment contracts because no actual contract is established in the transaction. Coinbase said that when Coinbase went public, the SEC had recognized its behavior. The SEC countered that the agency allowed Coinbase to go public, which did not mean that it automatically recognized that transactions on the platform were in compliance with securities laws.