"This is not about how the litigation was going, this is about the Trump administration not wanting to go after crypto," a source told BI.

The SEC had settled a case with Ripple, another San Francisco-based crypto company, last year for $125 million over selling unregistered securities. A separate suit with the SEC remains ongoing, and because of its complex nature and ongoing appeals, it's not as easy for the agency to drop as the Coinbase litigation.

If approved, the deal would cap a nearly two-year-long legal battle between America’s largest crypto exchange and the SEC, which had been a marquee case in the federal government’s now-crumbling crackdown on crypto.