On October 11, after the U.S. SEC sued digital asset market maker Cumberland, Cumberland responded in a statement, saying, "The U.S. SEC's enforcement priority strategy is designed to stifle innovation and prevent legitimate companies from participating in the digital asset field. In this case, the dispute is that the SEC believes that some of our transactions involving certain crypto assets are securities transactions. We have been discussing this issue with the SEC for five years. The SEC believes that these transactions require us to register as a broker-dealer. Although we expressed strong disagreement, we took measures and registered as a broker-dealer in 2019. Even so - despite Chairman Gary Gensler's call for everyone to "just come in and register" - we were still told that we could only use our broker-dealer to trade BTC or ETH (both of which are commodities and are not under the jurisdiction of the SEC). This calls into question the sincerity of the guidance on "come in and register." We will not make any changes to our business operations or the assets for which we provide liquidity because of the SEC's actions. We are confident in the company's strict compliance framework and discipline in complying with all known rules and regulations - even if the SEC's rules themselves have been moving the goalposts (ETH was considered a security not long ago). We have successfully demonstrated before that the company is willing to fight against regulators who use their power to harm the market rather than benefit it. We are ready to defend ourselves again. "As previously reported, the US SEC sued CumberlandDRW, accusing it of being an unregistered securities dealer.

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