Coinbase Global Inc. is facing a U.S. probe into whether it improperly let Americans trade digital assets that should have been registered as securities, Bloomberg News reported. The company’s shares dropped as much as 9.2%. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s scrutiny of Coinbase has increased since the platform expanded the number of tokens in which it offers trading, said two of the people, who asked not to be named because the inquiry hasn’t been disclosed publicly. The probe by the SEC’s enforcement unit predates the agency’s investigation into an alleged insider trading scheme that led the regulator last week to sue a former Coinbase manager and two other people. The drumbeat in Washington for U.S. regulators to do more to oversee crypto has grown louder as digital currencies have tumbled from all-time highs, erasing hundreds of billions of dollars in market value. SEC Chair Gary Gensler has homed in on trading platforms and argued that they should do more to protect retail investors.
