• The US SEC has sued Binance and Changpeng Zhao (CZ) for breaking securities rules.
• The SEC has alleged that Binance secretly allowed high-value U.S. customers to trade on the platform in violation of U.S. securities laws.
• This follows after the SEC had also gone after several other crypto exchanges, including Kraken and Coinbase.
SEC Sues Binance & CZ
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a lawsuit against Binance, the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange, and Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of the company for breaking US securities rules according to a report by The Wall Street Journal a few minutes ago.
Charges Against Binance & CZ
The regulatory agency alleges that Binance secretly allowed high-value U.S. customers to trade on the platform in violation of U.S. securities laws which prohibits unregistered exchanges from servicing U.S customers. The lawsuit also alleges that CZ exercised control over customer assets, adding that he commingled them with personal and company holdings according to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler statement; “Through thirteen charges, we allege that Zhao and Binance entities engaged in an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure, and calculated evasion of the law.“
Crypto Exchanges Facing Lawsuits
This latest development comes two weeks after the SEC sued Bittrex, one of the world’s largest and oldest cryptocurrency exchanges, and co-founder and ex-CEO William Shihara for violating securities laws as well as going after several other crypto exchanges including Kraken and Coinbase recently months ago .
Bitcoin Price Drop
Following this news Bitcoin has lost more than 2% of its value so far today and could fall below the $26k level soon .
Conclusion
This is not surprising news as the US Securities commission have been actively pursuing many crypto exchanges for violating their security regulations .