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Coinbase announced Friday the Securities and Exchange Commission has agreed to drop its enforcement case against the company pending the approval of the regulators commissioners. The agency had charged Coinbase with operating as an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency. Here's what SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce told Yahoo Finance earlier when asked if the SEC views digital tokens as securities or commodities.

Well, I've always had a little bit of a different approach than some of my colleagues on how we think about these things. And so what I'm hoping that we can get to is a place where we have greater clarity around what how we're thinking about things, thinking about things in a in a legal framework that is workable, um that is consistent with the statute, um but also enables people to figure out what they what something is categorized as without hiring lots of lawyers and and and you know, having the fear of litigation hanging over them.

Joining me now, Ryan Rasmussen, Bitwise Head of Research. Ryan, it's good to see you. So, between hearing what Hester Peirce just had to say and the Coinbase, it looks like lawsuit going away. What does this mean for the industry?

Yeah, I think it's a really monumental moment for the industry that the SEC has dropped its years long tirade against Coinbase and the lawsuit that they've been chasing after Coinbase on. And ultimately, we expected Coinbase to prevail from that lawsuit in the courts, but I think it's a huge signal to the market that the actual regulatory pivot that we've been hearing is going to happen, that it's actually happening in Washington already. So we're very excited about it. You spoke to Hester Peirce earlier. Obviously she has a different way of viewing the market than the Gensler era SEC, and she's the leading the crypto task force that will take on setting clear rules and regulations for crypto and creating a framework for crypto to finally be on a level playing field with the rest of the financial and technology industry. So we're really excited about that, and we think that we'll look back in 5, 10, 20 years at today's dismissal of the case against Coinbase as a real pivotal moment in crypto's long-term journey.

Let me ask you this though, Ryan. I mean, does this mean we're going to see an explosion of coins? I won't use the word that people use to describe these types of coins at times. I mean, are we going to see more politician meme coins, for example? And is that a good thing for the industry?

I mean, I hope not. I hope we don't see any more politician-based or rooted meme coins. I do think that what this means is that we'll finally see some of those use cases for crypto and some of the exciting innovations that crypto can bring to traditional industries. I think we'll finally start to see those break through. But I don't think this means that every crypto project is going to thrive now. I think competition and execution certainly still matters. But what we do know today is that we're finally on that level playing field. So we're really excited about where we go from here. I do think that we'll start to see fewer and fewer of those, you know, pump and dump type coins or those political meme coins or just other meme coins as the market starts to mature and we enter this next phase of growth of mainstream adoption and playing by the rules, if you will. And for that, I'm very excited. But I do think there's been a lot of riffraff in the crypto industry for many, many years, and part of this growth that crypto does want to mature and enter the next phase of its life cycle, part of that growth will be leaving that in the past. And I think we're on the path to do that, but it won't be necessarily a smooth ride there.