U.K.-based cryptocurrency lender Nexo reentered the U.S. market Monday after exiting two years ago due to regulatory quarrels.
Co-founder Antoni Trenchev credited President Donald Trump, whose crypto-friendly moves since January have included elevating pro-crypto regulators and announcing the creation of a national strategic crypto reserve, for making the U.S. “a place where innovation is championed, not stifled [and a] place where pioneers are celebrated.”
“Nexo is returning to America — stronger, smarter, and determined to win," Trenchev said in a prepared statement.
U.S.-based retail and institutional clients will now have access to Nexo products including high-yield crypto savings accounts, asset-backed credit lines, advanced trading and institutional-grade liquidity solutions.
The firm, which has $11 billion in assets under management, announced its U.S. exit in December 2022 after 18 months of good-faith talks with regulators sussing out how Nexo could comply with American financial laws.
Regulators in eight states — New York, California, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Washington and Vermont — had filed administrative actions against Nexo that September, claiming the firm’s Earn Interest Product, which allows customers to lend digital assets in interest-bearing accounts, qualified as a security and needed to be registered as such.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had launched an investigation the previous year into whether Nexo was violating consumer protection laws.
One month after its exit announcement, Nexo agreed to pay $45 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve allegations that it sold unregistered securities through its EIP.
Trenchev said in a blog post at the time that Nexo was “content with this unified resolution, which unequivocally puts an end to all speculations around [the company’s] relations to the United States.”
The SEC, then under the leadership of Chair Gary Gensler, charged a number of crypto firms with regulatory violations in early 2023. Days before the Nexo settlement was announced, the SEC charged Gemini and Genesis with selling unregistered securities; days later, it charged Kraken with the same thing.
Commissioner Hester Peirce, then the SEC’s most vocal internal critic for its handling of crypto firms, at the time called Kraken’s charges something a “paternalistic and lazy regulator” would do.
While Peirce remains a commissioner under the Trump administration, her job likely feels different: the SEC (and other federal financial regulators) has done an about-face on crypto since January, hosting industry roundtables for the Crypto Task Force that Peirce is leading.
Newly minted SEC Chair Paul Atkins credited Peirce, at the third such roundtable Friday, noting her “principled and tireless advocacy for common-sense crypto policy within the United States.”
“It is no wonder that she has earned the title of ‘CryptoMom.’ Commissioner Peirce is the right person to lead the effort to come up with a rational regulatory framework for crypto asset markets,” Atkins said.
Atkins previously served as an SEC commissioner from 2002 to 2008. But most recently, he was co-chair of the Token Alliance, an initiative under crypto lobbying group the Digital Chamber.
Nexo’s reentry into the U.S. was announced at an event headlined by Donald Trump Jr., according to a press release.
Trump Jr., who launched crypto company World Liberty Financial with his father and brother during Trump Sr.’s presidential campaign, said his family “see[s] the opportunity for the financial sector and want[s] to ensure we bring that back to the U.S.”
“The key to everything crypto is going to be the regulatory framework,” Trump Jr. added.
