TL;DR
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On Monday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Binance sued and its CEO, CZ, on charges of violating federal securities laws.
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This case stems from the defendants’ blatant disregard for federal securities laws and the investor and market protections provided by those laws.
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This is not the first and certainly not the last attack on the crypto industry by the SEC. We hope it doesn’t slow down innovation or completely eliminate the opportunity for crypto in the US.
Full story
Uh-oh…The SEC is at it again – targeting Binance this time.
On Monday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Binance sued and its CEO, CZ, on charges of violating federal securities laws.
Before we start making assumptions, let’s discuss the facts.
There are 13 charges, including: the unregistered offering and sale of crypto assets, failure to prevent US investors from accessing Binance.com, and operating as an unregistered exchange, broker and clearing house.
The first line of the SEC’s filing reads:
This case stems from the defendants’ blatant disregard for federal securities laws and the investor and market protections provided by those laws. By doing so, Defendants have enriched themselves with billions of dollars while exposing investors’ assets to significant risk.
(heavy stuff!)
At a press conference, our frenemy, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, said that Binance was “trying to circumvent US securities laws by announcing sham audits that they ignored behind the scenes” in an effort to get major US investors to use the platform.
The SEC further claimed that Solana, Polygon, Cardano and several other coins are securities in the lawsuit.
(Basically, with this, plus historical Ethereum fees, they’ve targeted every major crypto project besides Bitcoin).
On the one hand, we get it, this is their job – to regulate and enforce federal securities laws in the US.
But on the other hand, it feels like they just threw the sink at Binance, hoping something sticks.
So far CZ’s response (op Twitter) was like, “We’ll respond as soon as we see the complaint. I haven’t seen it yet. The media gets the information before we do.”
This is not the first and certainly not the last attack on the crypto industry by the SEC.
We hope it doesn’t slow down innovation or completely eliminate the opportunity for crypto in the US.