After Nearly a Decade, Gary Gensler's Poster Child for Crypto Compliance Executes Its First Trade

After weathering years of industry skepticism and navigating a shifting regulatory landscape, Prometheum has executed its first crypto trades—aiming to prove its critics wrong by seamlessly integrating digital assets with traditional investments under a single regulatory roof.

The company, which has raised nearly $100 million since it was established nearly a decade ago, began providing access to crypto trading last week. While the service is currently limited to Ethereum, founder and co-CEO Aaron Kaplan said the firm expects to debut additional digital assets in the near future.

“We’ve just kept our heads down and kept moving forward,” Kaplan told Decrypt. “Our goal is to be able to service the broker‑dealer and [Registered Investment Advisor] channels and the major asset issuers, and I think that there's a lot of comfort.”

That comfort comes at a time when the rest of the market is looking elsewhere. While investors have flocked to vehicles like spot Bitcoin ETFs following their watershed 2024 debut, Prometheum’s long-awaited milestone went virtually unnoticed by the broader crypto sector.

The industry's indifference is rooted in a bitter feud. In 2023, Kaplan caught industry flak for testifying before U.S. lawmakers that the SEC had clearly laid out a path for compliance—essentially validating the aggressive enforcement tactics of then-SEC Chair Gary Gensler. While giants like Coinbase fought the regulator in court, Prometheum pressed forward with a business model that treated digital assets like Ethereum as securities.

At the time, onlookers mocked Prometheum’s lack of volume, comparing the firm's step-by-step approach to a “bicycle with no wheels” or a “vending machine with no snacks.”

Now, the wheels are turning, and Kaplan insists the company is poised to capitalize on the tokenization of U.S. capital markets. With the launch of its corresponding clearing system, he argues broker-dealers can finally offer customers direct access to crypto alongside traditional assets, bypassing the management fees and a “layer of abstraction” that ETFs represent.

“This is good for crypto,” Kaplan said. “This is bringing in hundreds of millions of accounts that now all of a sudden could invest in crypto.”

But Prometheum’s grand opening arrives in a radically altered reality. The strict regulatory regime they built their business to satisfy has dissolved. Following Gary Gensler’s departure from the SEC, the agency’s lawsuit against Coinbase was officially dropped and dismissed—along with most of the regulator’s other crypto lawsuits and investigations.

Before Prometheum executed its first transaction, the firm spent years building its custody infrastructure and regulatory approvals. In 2023, the firm became the first to receive a license from the SEC and FINRA to operate what’s known as a special purpose broker-dealer, allowing Prometheum to legally safeguard digital asset securities under federal law.

Worse for Prometheum’s competitive edge, the exclusive regulatory moat they spent years preparing for may no longer be necessary. 

Revised guidance released by the SEC last year indicated that the regulator’s specialized framework is optional. According to an analysis by global law firm Winston & Strawn LLP, traditional broker-dealers can now custody digital asset securities under standard customer protection rules—without needing the license Prometheum dedicated time to acquiring.