US Court Refuses to Freeze Binance Assets at SEC Request
[ad_1]
The District Court of the District of Columbia refused to block the assets of the Binance crypto exchange, informed The Washington Post. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) demanded to freeze the assets of a subsidiary of the Binance US exchange.
The SEC sued the crypto exchange on June 5. The commission accused Binance Holdings Ltd., its US division and the founder of the exchange, Zhao Changpeng, of violating securities laws. According to the SEC, Binance did not register as an exchange or broker, creating excessive risks for investors and depriving them of their protection.
In addition, the American regulator issued an order to freeze Binance US assets, after which the exchange had to stop working with deposits in dollars. The company, in a statement, said it was disappointed with the SEC’s refusal to negotiate and the decision to sue. Binance assured that they would “vigorously defend” the platform from the latest abuses of the SEC and fight the regulator to the fullest extent of the law.
Later, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Coinbase with similar accusations: the regulator’s lawyers are sure that since 2019 the exchange has “earned billions of dollars, illegally facilitated the purchase and sale of cryptoassets.”
Conflicts between the US authorities and crypto exchanges occur regularly. In particular, at the end of March, the founder of the FTX crypto exchange Sam Bankman-Fried accused in giving a $40 million bribe to one or more Chinese officials. Prior to this, there was a collapse of the Bankman-Fried exchange, which began after the Coindesk article. According to the publication, most of the assets ($14.6 billion) of Alameda (a Bankman-Fried hedge fund) are FTT tokens – coins issued by its subsidiary. After that, investors began withdrawing money from the exchange and selling its FTT tokens. However, later, according to Reuters, about $ 1 billion of funds belonging to clients disappeared from FTX.
Then the SEC charged Bankman-Fried with organizing a scheme to deceive investors. The regulator believes Bahamas-based FTX has raised over $1.8 billion since at least May 2019, including $1.1 billion from about 90 U.S. investors.
[ad_2]
Source link
