Editor | Wu said blockchain
1. The U.S. SEC accused Binance of illegally soliciting U.S. investors to buy, sell, and trade cryptocurrencies, as well as providing coin-earning plans BNB Vault and Simple Earn, and pledge investment plans. In addition, the SEC accused Binance of intentionally evading US supervision. The enforcement action follows a similar lawsuit filed against Binance by the CFTC Commodity Futures Trading Commission in March. In the lawsuit, the SEC alleges that Binance and its affiliates repeatedly lied to customers and misdirected funds to another investment fund owned by Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao. It echoes similar allegations by its founder Sam. The lawsuit, if successful, could bar Binance and Changpeng Zhao from doing business in the United States, and also accuses the company and its affiliate BAM Trading of operating as an unregistered securities exchange, broker-dealer and clearinghouse. The SEC also accused Binance.US of lying about preventing market manipulation and allowing wash trading by an undisclosed “market maker” trading firm, Sigma Chain, also owned by Changpeng Zhao.
2. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler criticized Changpeng Zhao and Binance entities for “participating in a wide-ranging network of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure, and intentional evasion of the law.” “As alleged, Changpeng Zhao and Binance misled investors about their risk controls and trading volumes, while actively concealing who was running the platform, manipulated trading by its affiliated market makers, and even investor funds and crypto Where and who is the custodian of the assets,” Gensler said in a press release announcing the enforcement action. “They are trying to evade U.S. securities laws by declaring false controls that they are ignoring behind the scenes so they can keep high-value U.S. customers on their platforms. The public should be wary of investing any of their hard-earned assets in these illicit platforms Or invest in these illegal platforms.”
3. The SEC accused Binance.US of selling tokens as securities including but not limited to BNB, BUSD, SOL, ADA, Matic, FIL, ATOM, SAND, MANA, ALGO, AXS, COTI. The SEC emphasized that the listed tokens are "including but not limited to." It is worth noting that tokens with large trading volume such as ETH USDC USDT LTC are not included. The chairman of the US SEC has previously stated that any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin may contain securities attributes.
4. It should be noted that the charges brought by the SEC and CFTC against Binance are all civil lawsuits, not criminal charges involving money laundering that BitMEX has encountered before. It should be the U.S. Department of Justice that should file criminal charges, and the actions of the U.S. Department of Justice are still pending. Earlier, Reuters said that there were divisions within the US Department of Justice.
5. Binance responded: From the very beginning, we have actively cooperated with the investigation of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and worked hard to answer their questions and address their concerns. Recently, we had extensive good-faith discussions to reach a negotiated solution to their investigation. However, despite our efforts, the SEC abandoned that process in today's complaint, opting instead to act unilaterally and file a lawsuit. We are frustrated with this choice.
To be clear: any allegations that user assets on the Binance.US platform were ever at risk are false. The SEC's actions appear to be a rush to win jurisdiction from other regulators -- and investors don't appear to be the SEC's top priority. Due to our size and global popularity, Binance is now an easy target in the US regulatory tug-of-war. Since Binance is not a U.S. exchange, the SEC has limited scope for action. Nonetheless, we stand with U.S. cryptoasset market participants against the SEC’s recent overreach, and we are prepared to fight it to the fullest extent of the law.
Full text of the indictment:
https://www.docdroid.net/I02zzqT/sec-v-binance-4-pdf#page=85
The full text of Binance’s response:
https://www.binance.com/en/blog/ecosystem/sec-complaint-aims-to-unilaterally-define-crypto-market-structure-8707489117122437402
