- FTX US is holding off from listing new coins due to regulatory uncertainty
- The American wing of the company lists less than 10% of its parent company’s supported coins
- FXT US CEO Brett Harrison said that he didn’t want to risk being fined later down the road for listing an unregulated security
FTX US is holding off from listing new coins because of uncertainty over how the space is being regulated, according to CEO Brett Harrison. Harrison told the Daily Decrypt podcast that uncertainty over whether certain cryptocurrencies could be considered securities is forcing them to stay their hand or risk being fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) further down the road. This strategy is markedly different from other exchanges, with the likes of Coinbase adding rafts of new coins based seemingly on potential trading volume rather than quality, which Harrison admitted opposed FTX US’s approach.
FTX US Doesn’t Want to Risk Enforcement Action
Harrison told Decrypt that the lack of clarity offered by the likes of the SEC has led to them holding back listing new coins, despite this hampering their earning potential. The rationale for this is clear however, with the money making potential undermined by the risk of SEC action:
…we’re not sure where regulations are going to end up in terms of what tokens are allowed to be listed or not allowed to be listed—will exchanges receive enforcement action for listing certain tokens that are deemed to be securities later?
The cautious approach taken by FTX US has seen the exchange list just 27 assets, barely 10% of the 322 offered by its parent company. Even that number is less than the 487 coins offered by Huobi and Binance’s 395. Coinbase in particular has seen a very different approach in recent years, going from just 6 in 2018 to 169 today.
Harrison: We Only Want to List Quality Products
Harrison was very pointed when discussing this approach, saying that, “We want to list very, very high-quality project projects with very clear roadmaps and very clear utility” in comparison to Coinbase who have taken to adding, to put it bluntly, any shitcoin going that will generate volume for them.
U.S. regulators have threatened promised to regulate cryptocurrency markets on a seemingly monthly basis since 2018, but very few concrete steps have actually been made towards clarifying the status of cryptocurrencies, with projects pulled up for doing as the SEC asked and approaching them before launching a new product.
