BINANCE HAWAII TRIAL

And if you play out that metaphor, Gensler sees himself as the sheriff.

The head of the SEC, Gary Gensler, often says that crypto is like the Wild West. And, you know, this gets to the heart of the battle. The SEC says the company has made a deliberate decision not to register with the SEC. Several of these have to do with Binance not complying with regulations. MARTIN: Now, you said that there - that the complaint is a hundred pages long, but of those charges, are there some that stand out? And what the SEC alleges, broadly, Michel, is CZ and Binance have violated and continue to violate the law. Binance's chief executive, who goes by his initials, CZ, says Binance's headquarters is wherever he's sitting. There's no need for government oversight. They believe there's no need for a headquarters. And, interestingly, it has no physical headquarters anywhere, which may sound unusual, but this is how many crypto companies operate. And when you dig into it, Binance is accused of misleading customers, of steering their money to another company that's controlled by Binance's CEO and of putting investors' assets at risk, according to the SEC, which describes Binance as an opaque web of corporate entities that does business around the world. GURA: So this company faces more than a dozen charges, some of which are quite serious, Michel, in a complaint that is more than a hundred pages long. MARTIN: NPR's David Gura is with us now to tell us more.

BINANCE HAWAII TRIAL

His criminal trial is likely to be in the fall.In the world of crypto, another major company is in trouble.īinance - like finance but with a B - Binance operates the world's largest platform for trading cryptocurrencies, and now it's facing a massive lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission. prosecutors and the SEC charged FTX’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried with a host of money laundering, fraud and securities fraud charges in December. The lawsuit comes roughly eight months after the collapse of FTX, which was also accused of co-mingling customers’ funds and investing the proceeds in high-risk investments that customers were unaware they were participating in. “Unfortunately, the SEC’s refusal to productively engage with us is just another example of the Commission’s misguided and conscious refusal to provide much-needed clarity and guidance to the digital asset industry.” We intend to defend our platform vigorously,” the company said in a Twitter post. “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. In a social media post, Binance said that it has been cooperating with the SEC’s investigation but said that the agency “chose to act unilaterally and litigate.” “The public should beware of investing any of their hard-earned assets with or on these unlawful platforms,” Gensler said. SEC Chair Gary Gensler in a written statement that Zhao and Binance “engaged in an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure, and calculated evasion of the law.” The lawsuit lays out the extent to which the firms owners knew of the alleged legal violations: “Binance’s CCO bluntly admitted to another Binance compliance officer in December 2018, “we are operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.”

District Court for the District of Columbia, the Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit on Monday lists thirteen charges against the firm - including commingling and divert customer assets to an entity Zhao owned called Sigma Chain.īinance is a Cayman Islands limited liability company founded by Zhao and the charges are familiar to practices uncovered after the collapse of the second largest cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, last year.

securities laws in a lawsuit filed by the SEC.įiled in the U.S. WASHINGTON (AP) - The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao are accused of misusing investor funds, operating as an unregistered exchange and violating a slew of U.S.

Binance hawaii