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Looking forward to the full-throated condemnation of this letter by those who accused the Biden administration of pressuring social media firms to moderate COVID-19 and election fraud misinfo! Any second now...

Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal again making oblique legal threats to chill criticism of Coinbase, suggesting to The Hill that it might be “defamatory” for me or Public Citizen to draw a line from their political spending to the current crypto regulatory environment.

Now, critics are putting the industry’s ramped-up campaign involvement last cycle under a microscope.

Molly White, a cryptocurrency researcher and prominent crypto skeptic, argued the SEC’s changes in direction were the “goal of a lot of the election spending over the last couple of years.”

“I think that the political contributions were quite directly related to both the changing regulatory environment in terms of, you know, broad policy direction, but also in terms of dropping the enforcement action,” White told The Hill.

Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, slammed Coinbase and the SEC last week, arguing the industry’s campaign spending “paid off.”

“The SEC decision is also an important marker in the Trump administration’s rush to abandon prosecution and enforcement actions against corporate criminals and wrongdoers,” Public Citizen co-President Robert Weissman wrote. “This is not just an abandonment of those already wronged by corporate wrongdoers, it is an invitation to a corporate crime spree and epidemic of corporate wrongdoing.”

Coinbase, along with other figures in the crypto world, fiercely rejected the criticism, pointing out opposition to Gensler’s probes was brewing for years. This included long before Trump publicly reversed his stance on crypto to back the industry in late 2023.

“I find those comments misinformed at best, if I’m being generous, and defamatory at worst,” Paul Grewal, chief legal officer at Coinbase, told The Hill of the backlash.

Some criticism, Grewal argued, fails to consider Trump was once a critic of crypto and at one point called it a “scam.”

Grewal pointed out how Congress moved major legislation in 2023 on market structure, an issue that was met with bipartisan support. The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act in 2023 received support from 71 Democrats in the House.

“The fact of the matter is that President Trump did evolve and transform in his view on crypto, really starting in December 2023,” Grewal said. “In January 2024, we first started to engage with him and his team, but it was against a much more nuanced, complicated and complete history that I think a lot of the critics just don’t want to engage in.”

Previously:

“Some criticism, Grewal argued, fails to consider Trump was once a critic of crypto and at one point called it a ‘scam.’ ... ‘[It’s a] more nuanced, complicated and complete history that I think a lot of the critics just don’t want to engage in.’”

Huh.