Coinbase CLO Paul Grewal revealed that the company has submitted a FOIA request to gain a complete understanding of the costs and the individuals involved in the SEC’s actions against crypto, focusing on its Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit.
**Coinbase Submits FOIA Request to Estimate Costs of War Against Crypto**
Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the U.S., has launched a full investigation on the costs of the war against crypto of the Biden administration, seeking to ascertain how much taxpayers paid for the actions of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against the crypto industry.
Paul Grewal, CLO at Coinbase, revealed this course of action on Monday, explaining that apart from affecting the advancement of the crypto industry in the U.S., the exchange sought to determine the monetary costs of the commission’s efforts.
To this end, Coinbase has directed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the agency, requiring information about every single activity including digital assets and the costs associated with these.
Grewal specified that Coinbase aims to determine how many enforcement actions were carried out and how much they cost, the number of employees involved in these and their costs, and which third-party contractors accompanied these actions and how much they were paid.
Coinbase itself was involved in a legal battle with the agency, which claimed that it had provided access to unregistered securities to U.S. customers. Nonetheless, Coinbase prevailed, and the commission recently decided to drop this action and others against other crypto actors.
**Read more: SEC to Dismiss Coinbase Case, Pending Commissioners’ Approval**
The probe also seeks to clarify the role of the “Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit,” part of the Enforcement division that was at the forefront of these initiatives under the direction of former SEC chair Gary Gensler. Grewal stated that Coinbase wants to know what was their budget, how many employees worked on it, and how much those employees charged.
Grewal stressed that Coinbase was committed to getting to the bottom of this issue. “It may take time to get the full picture, but I think we’ve shown that we will do what it takes for as long as it takes,” he concluded.
