Coinbase CEO says it won’t work with law firms who hire anti-crypto staff

• Gurbir Grewal was the enforcement chief at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
• He joins international law firm Milbank as a partner in its litigation and arbitration practice

Brian Armstrong has said that Coinbase won’t work with law firms if they hire people who worked against the crypto industry during their time in government.

In a post on X, Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, said:

“It’s an ethics violation in my book to try and unlawfully kill an industry while refusing to publish clear rules. If you were senior there, you cannot say you were just following orders. They had the option to leave the SEC and many good people did. It was not a normal SEC tenure.”

Armstrong’s remarks come as Milbank, an international law firm, recently hired Gurbir S. Grewal as a partner in its New York office’s litigation and arbitration practice. Before, Grewal was the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) enforcement head.

According to Armstrong, senior law partners appear to be unaware of how the crypto industry feels about issues such as this, adding that it no longer works with Milbank because it hired Grewal.

“I don’t believe in permanently cancelling people, but we as an industry should not be putting money in their pocket after the abuse,” Armstrong wrote.

We’ve let all the law firms we work with know, that if they hire anyone who committed these bad deeds in the (soon to be) prior administration, we will no longer be a client of theirs.

Senior partners at these law firms seem unaware of the crypto industry’s position on this.… https://t.co/k8R6NtfTV1 pic.twitter.com/RT0k408i9f

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) December 3, 2024

“Record of success”

Following his onboarding at Milbank, Scott A. Edelman, chair of Milbank, said that Grewal had a “record of success” and that his experience would be “extremely valuable” to Milbank’s clients.

As director of the SEC’s enforcement division, Grewal was responsible for overseeing investigations, enforcement action, and litigation conducted by the SEC. During his time at the SEC, the agency brought over 100 enforcement actions targeting non-compliance in the crypto space.

In 2022, Grewal said that the SEC wouldn’t “give crypto a pass” and that it would be enforcing rules it believes applies to crypto.

Outgoing SEC chair Gary Gensler said that Grewal has led the division in thinking “about how to best protect investors and help ensure market participants comply with our time-tested securities laws.”

Gensler is to leave the SEC on January 20.