Surveillance Sharing Agreement is a legal partnership between two entities who agree to use a surveillance to check if one of their financial(crypto) products(ETFs) are being used to make fraudulent transactions or evade money laundering rules.
This practice came into mainstream after the US SEC made comments on several Spot Bitcoin ETFs by BlackRock, WisdomTree, Fidelity and others. It said that these applications were inadequate as they did not mention who would keep a surveillance on the markets to help evade fraud or money laundering using these ETFs. Following which BlackRock, Valkyrie and a few others named Coinbase as their SSA Partner.
Nasdaq-Coinbase Surveillance Sharing Agreement
The filings of various spot Bitcoin ETF applications by Nasdaq on behalf of issuers such as BlackRock, Valkyrie, etc. show that on June 08, 2022, Nasdaq reached an agreement (Spot BTC SSA) on terms with Coinbase to share surveillance reports on Bitcoin ETFs.
The agreement became effective on June 16, 2023.
The reason for Nasdaq choosing Coinbase as per their SEC filings comes out to be the fact that Coinbase has 56% share in Dollar-Bitcoin trade in the USA.
