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The Justice Department is investigating the exchange as well, Reuters has reported.įor the crypto market more broadly, the SEC’s lawsuit against Binance is already having ripple effects.

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In March the CFTC struck first with a series of similar charges resulting from the exchange’s operations in the U.S.

authorities have been circling for months. His long-running refusal to state the location of the exchange has vexed regulators around the world.

Yet while Zhao boasts a massive following online and in the crypto market, he and his company are viewed skeptically by many in Washington. He even reportedly once approached Gensler about advising Binance, an offer that the then-MIT professor turned down. In late 2022, as fears spread that FTX was on the brink, Zhao fueled the concern before vowing to take over the exchange - an offer that he soon backed away from, setting the stage for FTX’s eventual bankruptcy. Zhao has long been one of the most influential names in crypto.

In turn, Sigma Chain, a trading firm owned by Zhao, was allegedly able to artificially inflate trading volumes on Binance.US through a wash-trading scheme, according to the SEC. The SEC also said Binance.US failed to properly surveil trading on its market as it had claimed to be doing so. “We are operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro,” a former Binance executive told another in December 2018, according to the SEC’s complaint.Īmong the other allegations leveled against Binance were that the exchange has been operating an unregistered national securities exchange, broker-dealer and clearing agency. federal securities laws” and continue directing certain “high-value U.S. The SEC said Monday that the affiliate that was set up in 2019 - Binance.US - was “part of an elaborate scheme to evade U.S. regulators, however, have alleged that Binance was in the states all along. But the exchange was quick to grab market share overseas, and, in 2019, declared that it was setting its sights on the U.S. “We intend to defend our platform vigorously.”įounded in 2017, Binance broke onto the scene relatively late compared to other crypto businesses like Coinbase and Kraken. “While we take the SEC’s allegations seriously, they should not be the subject of an SEC enforcement action, let alone on an emergency basis,” the company wrote in the post. The company said it was “disheartened” by the SEC’s decision to bring the case to court after the two sides had been engaged in talks about a settlement. At one point in the complaint, the SEC alleges that customer money was “at Binance’s and Zhao’s mercy.”īinance denied the SEC’s allegations in a blog post, including the claim that customer assets at Binance.US were at risk. But the Binance case represents Gensler’s biggest salvo to date, with the agency taking a broad swing against the exchange and its high-profile CEO. Since the fall of FTX seven months ago, the SEC has orchestrated a sweeping crackdown on the $1 trillion crypto market.

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