Coinbase Beats Much of Customer Lawsuit Over US Token Sales

Coinbase has won the dismissal of much of a lawsuit accusing it of selling unregistered securities, but customers may pursue claims over another type of transaction.

The largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange was sued by customers who claimed that buying and selling tokens such as XRP and dogecoin through Coinbase constituted an illegal sale of securities without proper registration.

Coinbase won the dismissal of all claims based on 'matched' transactions, where it simply pairs buy and sell orders from customers - this accounts for 99.97% of trading volume, estimated to be hundreds of billions of dollars.

The judge also said customers may pursue claims over 'inventory' transactions, where Coinbase fills orders from tokens it owns, which accounted for the remaining 0.03% of trading volume and comprised at least $178 million in sales.