SEC dismissed crypto cases against Kraken, Consensys and Cumberland

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed joint stipulations on March 27, 2025 to dismiss with prejudice three civil enforcement actions against Kraken, Consensys Software and Cumberland DRW. The coordinated filings ended cases aimed at three different parts of the digital-asset business—centralized trading, wallet-based swaps and staking, and institutional liquidity provision—and made the date a concrete marker in the agency’s change of crypto-enforcement policy.

The dismissals were not judicial rulings that the companies’ activities complied with securities law. In each litigation release, the SEC said it acted to facilitate efforts to reform and renew its regulatory approach to crypto, not because it had assessed the merits of its allegations. The agency also said the decision did not necessarily state its position in any other case.

What the filings did

Each stipulation invoked Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(A)(ii). The parties agreed to dismissal with prejudice for the conduct alleged through March 27, 2025, without costs or fees to either side. “With prejudice” meant the SEC could not simply refile the same claims covering that conduct. It did not create a generally applicable exemption for exchanges, wallet developers, staking interfaces or trading firms.

The accompanying releases identified the defendants and courts. Payward Inc. and Payward Ventures Inc., operating as Kraken, were defendants in the Northern District of California. Consensys Software was sued in the Eastern District of New York. Cumberland DRW’s case was in the Northern District of Illinois.

The documents also recorded the policy backdrop: Acting SEC Chairman Mark Uyeda had launched the agency’s Crypto Task Force on January 21, 2025. In the stipulations, the SEC characterized dismissal as an exercise of discretion and a policy matter. The companies, in turn, waived claims connected to the litigation and rights to seek reimbursement of legal fees or costs from the government.

Three theories left unresolved

The Kraken complaint, filed November 20, 2023, alleged that its platform operated as an unregistered securities exchange, broker, dealer and clearing agency. The SEC also alleged deficient controls, recordkeeping failures and commingling of customer cash and crypto assets. Kraken disputed the case. A federal judge had denied Kraken’s motion to dismiss on August 23, 2024, so the March 27 filing ended litigation that had already survived an important preliminary challenge.

The Consensys complaint, filed June 28, 2024, alleged unregistered brokerage through MetaMask Swaps and MetaMask Staking, plus unregistered offers and sales connected with staking programs from Lido and Rocket Pool. Those were SEC allegations, not adjudicated findings. Dismissal stopped the court from resolving whether the challenged interface and staking conduct fit the securities-law categories asserted by the agency.

The Cumberland complaint, filed October 10, 2024, alleged that the firm operated as an unregistered dealer while buying and selling more than $2 billion of crypto assets that the SEC described as securities. That dollar figure belonged to the SEC’s allegation; it was not a penalty, loss estimate or event-day trading-volume measure.

Why March 27 mattered

The simultaneous filings were broader than relief for three defendants. They withdrew live test cases spanning several routes by which the SEC had sought to apply existing registration rules to crypto intermediaries. Combined with the agency’s February 27 dismissal of its Coinbase action, the decisions showed that the new leadership was moving disputed classification and market-structure questions away from those particular courtroom contests and toward a policy process.

That shift reduced immediate litigation exposure for the named companies, but it did not settle which crypto assets were securities or define registration rules for comparable businesses. No statute changed on March 27, and the stipulations expressly resisted broader precedent.

No cryptocurrency price claim is necessary to establish the event’s importance. The primary record verifies a consequential institutional reversal, but it does not measure market reaction or prove that the dismissals caused any asset-price movement. The defensible event-day conclusion is narrower: on March 27, 2025, the SEC formally terminated three pending crypto cases while leaving their central legal questions unresolved.