Oregon’s Attorney General (AG) has filed a motion to keep the lawsuit against Coinbase in state court, following the crypto exchange’s efforts to move the litigation to federal court. Oregon Says Coinbase Case Must Stay In State Courts On July 2, Oregon’s Attorney General, Dan Rayfield, filed a motion to remand its lawsuit against Coinbase back to the Circuit Court of the State of Oregon for Multnomah County. The motion follows the crypto exchange’s attempt to move the case to federal court. In early June, Coinbase filed a notice of removal, seeking to take the action from the Oregon courts to federal court, arguing that the case raises a federal question. The exchange argues that Oregon’s state law (OSL) claims “arise under” the federal law because the state’s courts use the federal Securities Act of 1993, and the federal Howey Test, for guidance to define what constitutes an “investment contract.” However, Oregon’s motion explains that “almost 50 years ago, the Supreme Court of Oregon, sitting en banc, broke stride with Howey in its interpretation of an ‘investment contract’ under the OSL, deciding the term should be ‘modified’ to encompass a broader range of investment schemes. Pratt v. Kross, 276, Or. 483, 497 (1976).” Since then, Oregon courts have followed the Pratt Test, which applies a broader definition of investment contract. The AG noted that “because Oregon does not strictly follow the Howey test, the State’s claims here do not turn on the Howey test.” The motion claims that the lawsuit isn’t a “regulatory land grab,” as Coinbase called it. Instead, it is a “quintessential state law action” that seeks redress on behalf of Oregonians under the state’s law. Therefore, it should be “adjudicated by the state court in which the Attorney General filed it.” Oregon’s ‘Gensler-Era’ Lawsuit On April 18, Oregon’s AG filed a complaint in Multnomah County Circuit Court against Coinbase, alleging the crypto exchange had violated the Oregon securities law by facilitating the sale of unregistered cryptocurrencies to the state’s residents. As reported by Bitcoinist, the lawsuit states that the exchange “has continuously and repeatedly violated the Oregon Securities Law, which ascribes liability to persons ´who [s]ell[] or successfully solicit[] the sale of a security … in violation of the Oregon Securities Law’ (ORS 59.115(1)(a)), as well as to persons who ‘participate[] or materially aid[] in the sale’ (ORS 59.115(3)).” Following the news, Coinbase’s CLO, Paul Grewal, affirmed that Rayfield is “literally picking up where the Gary Gensler SEC left off,” adding that the lawsuit is a “copycat case” attempting to “resurrect” the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) long-criticized regulatory approach under the previous administration. The SEC sued Coinbase in June 2023, affirming that the platform operated as an unregistered broker-dealer and illegally sold unregistered securities through its staking program. However, the lawsuit was dismissed in February 2025 following the establishment of the agency’s Crypto Task Force. Oregon’s lawsuit now claims that Coinbase sold high-risk investments without properly vetting to protect consumers, which has caused significant losses for Oregonians. Notably, the case covers significantly more tokens than the SEC originally named in its case, which listed 13 tokens. The lawsuit claims that the crypto exchange offered and sold 31 cryptocurrencies as investment contracts. In a Wednesday post, Grewal called out Rayfield for attempting to send his “Gensler-era copycat” lawsuit back to state courts, affirming that it goes against the US’s recent progress developing a clear and unified framework for the industry. In most places, it’s 2025. But the Oregon AG still thinks it’s 2023 with his Gensler-era @secgov copycat suit. Yesterday, he asked the federal court to send the case back to his home state court. This pursuit of a patchwork of state regulation – especially against the historic progress towards a unified federal framework – only helps politicians and harms consumers.

Coinbase is facing a new class action lawsuit claiming that investors suffered significant losses over the years due to the crypto exchange’s “omissions,” which have affected the company’s stock price. Coinbase Accused Of Key ‘Omissions’ Last week, a Coinbase investor filed a class action lawsuit in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against Coinbase, CEO Brian Armstrong, and CFO Alesia Hass, alleging that the company’s shareholders have suffered “significant losses and damages” over the past four years. In the May 22 complaint, investor Brady Nessler, on behalf of persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired publicly traded Coinbase securities between April 14, 2021, and May 14, 2025, claims that the exchange has a long list of “wrongful acts and omissions” that have led to the “precipitous decline in the market value of the Company’s common shares” affecting the Plaintiff and other Class members. Among the omissions, the lawsuit lists the company’s recent data breach and its failure to disclose that it breached its 2020 agreement with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). In October 2020, the company’s UK subsidiary, Coinbase Payments (CBPL), signed a voluntary agreement to prevent onboarding clients considered “high risk” by the regulator and reduce potential criminal activity on the CBPL platform. The lawsuit alleges that the company made several “materially false and misleading” statements at the time that omitted that Coinbase Payments, Ltd. (CBPL) had been found guilty by the UK regulator of having “inadequate anti-money laundering focused systems to prevent high-risk individuals from using its platform, and that CBPL then breached the Agreement designed to address those deficiencies, creating legal exposure.” Notably, the price of the company’s common stock reportedly fell by $13.52 per share, a 5.52% decline, when a Reuters article titled “Coinbase UK unit fined for breaching financial crime requirements” was published during market hours on July 25, 2024. The FCA fined Coinbase’s UK subsidiary a $4.5 million penalty for breaching the voluntary agreement. Data Breach Leads To Class Action Lawsuits Moreover, the Class action suit argues that the recent data breaches also resulted in significant losses and damages for stockholders, highlighting the May 15 statement from the crypto exchange. As reported by Bitcoinist, Brian Armstrong shared that threat actors bribed a handful of customer support contractors to access Coinbase’s internal tools, resulting in the breach of names, email addresses, limited transaction records, and partial Social Security numbers of 1% of the exchange’s users. The hackers attempted to blackmail the exchange, demanding $20 million in Bitcoin (BTC) to return the sensitive customer data. However, Armstrong revealed they refused to pay the ransom. The lawsuit states that, following the news, the price of Coinbase’s common stock fell by $19.85 per share, a 7.2% decline, to close at $244 on May 15, 2025. Since then, multiple lawsuits have been filed against the crypto exchange, and a US Department of Justice Investigation has been opened. Based on this, Plaintiff seeks to “recover compensable damages caused by Defendants’ violations of the federal securities laws under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the ‘Exchange Act’).”