(Omar Marques/Getty Images)

SEC’s Crypto Task Force rapidly checking off boxes to end former cases — first Coinbase, now Robinhood

The news underscores a strong change in the new administration’s approach to regulating the crypto industry.

2/24/25 11:31AM

Robinhood announced the SEC had dropped its investigation into Robinhood Crypto and does not intend to “move forward with an enforcement action.” (Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company.) The move comes a few days after the SEC dropped its case against Coinbase, the largest US crypto platform.

This latest development underscores a major shift from the “regulation by enforcement” approach the former administration (and former SEC Chair Gary Gensler) took with the crypto industry. Earlier this month, current head of the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, Hester Peirce, wrote about the “crypto road trip” the agency has embarked on, and followed it on February 21 with a post likening the past regulatory environment to an escape room and that it was now “time to help open the door.”

In the announcement, Dan Gallagher, chief legal, compliance, and corporate affairs officer at Robinhood Markets, said:

“We applaud the staff’s decision to close this investigation with no action. Let me be crystal clear — this investigation never should have been opened. Robinhood Crypto always has and will always respect federal securities laws and never allowed transactions in securities.”

Last May, the SEC sent the company a Wells notice, which is “a notification from a regulator that it intends to recommend that enforcement proceedings be commenced against the prospective respondent,” as SEC Law explains.

The company said at the time that it had received subpoenas regarding its crypto listings, custody of crypto, and platform operations, regulatory filings showed.

For Patrick Gerhart, president of banking operations for Telcoin, this was a case in point of the SEC’s overreach in the crypto sector.

“The SEC closing the report on Robinhood is long overdue,” he said. “Hopefully, the SEC will now focus on clear and concise regulatory insight for the industry. Thus bringing in more transparency to the crypto realm. We are more than willing to work with the regulators hand in hand moving forward.”

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy is a financial journalist who’s written for Dow Jones, The Financial Times Group, and Business Insider.

Sage D. Young

23h

Zcash nosedives after counterfeit vulnerability revealed

The privacy-focused cryptocurrency has dropped more than 40% in the last 24 hours, shedding $3.8 billion in market capitalization.

$62B

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy23h

Bitcoin digital asset treasuries (DATs) have taken a big hit amid bitcoin’s tumble, shedding $62 billion in value since the asset’s October 6 all-time high, Artemis data shows, with their fully diluted market cap dropping to $72 billion from $134 billion in early October.

Meanwhile, bitcoin, which has fallen below $62,000 on Friday morning, is down 50% from its all-time high. DAT pioneer Strategy’s market cap stood at $102.2 billion on October 6, according to Macro Trends, and is now down to $45.6 billion, a 55% decline. Strategy has been in hot water since it sold 32 bitcoin earlier this week, and because its digital credit instrument, STRC, has been trading below its par value. Shares of Strategy are down 17% in the past week.

Sage D. Young6/4/26

“Sentiment for crypto is firmly in the gutter” as sector sinks, with tokens hitting multiyear lows

On Thursday, altcoins swept lower as bitcoin weakened. The tokens with the biggest losses in the last 24 hours are NEAR, ethena, and Zcash, each declining double digits in the period.

Other tokens have dropped to lows not seen in over a year in the past 24 hours:

Ethereum dropped 4.4% to under $1,780, a level not seen since April 2025.
XRP declined 4.5% to an 18-month low last hit in November 2024.
Solana decreased 6% to trade below the $70 mark, its lowest price since December 2023.
Dogecoin slid below $0.09, a 27-month low last seen in February 2024.

“Sentiment for crypto is firmly in the gutter as fears surrounding BTC/STRC and its potential overflow compound and overshadow anything that can be read as positive news (e.g. CLARITY movements),” according to Sean Dawson, head of research at crypto options platform Derive.xyz.

“[Altcoins] are high beta plays to BTC and are typically sold heavily in a downturn. Simply put, I’d be even more bearish on alts,” Dawson told Sherwood News.

“Further, liquidity has been drained into this year’s ‘superhot’ narrative of AI/data centers. In other words, there are just better, more exciting opportunities elsewhere,” Dawson added.

One cryptocurrency that has bucked the downtrend has been worldcoin, the native token for World, the digital identity project backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. While the broader crypto market has been pushing lower, WLD has jumped nearly 5% in the last 24 hours and 90% in the past seven days, data from CoinGecko shows.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

6/4/26

Bitcoin nears February lows amid $1.4 billion exiting its ETFs

“This week has been painful in crypto. There is really no other way of putting it.”