Court Partially Dismisses SEC's Lawsuit Against Coinbase, Kucoin Charged by DOJ and CFTC for AML Violations

Market Update Crypto markets are declining following news that most of the SEC’s lawsuit against Coinbase will proceed (more below). $BTC (-1.27%) reached intraday highs of $71.8k before declining to $69k after the news. Rumors have circulated that Morgan Stanley and PNC will soon approve access to Bitcoin ETFs on their wealth management platforms. Together, Morgan Stanley and PNC hold over $1.5 trillion in client assets and likely will provide a tailwind for ETF flows. Inflows yesterday totaled $418 million, helping to offset last week’s record outflows. $ETH (-1.78%) is trading near $3,500, as Fidelity filed an S-1 for its Ether Spot ETF this morning, posing interesting timing given the recent pessimism surrounding potential approvals. Fetch.AI ($FET), SingularityNET ($AGIX), and Ocean Protocol ($OCEAN) have agreed to merge into an “Artificial Superintelligence Alliance” to create one token (ASI) encompassing all three protocols with an FDV of $7.5 billion, pending governance approval. All three respective tokens have surged over 10% following the proposed merger. The SEC brought a lawsuit against Coinbase last summer, alleging the platform was operating an unregistered exchange, broker, and clearinghouse under federal securities laws, and through its staking platform