SEC SUES BINANCE & COINBASE
Summer is the time when there is always a lot of stagnation and weak activity because everyone wants to rest, even funders, investors, and developers.
Everyone, except… the SEC guys.
Here's what happened.
The SEC is filing lawsuits against Binance & Coinbase.
It's interesting, then, how did Coinbase get listed on NASDAQ, having gone through all the procedures of a legitimate business?
Yet… The SEC Chairman, Gary Gensler, decided that he knows more than others.
Regarding NASDAQ itself: Coinbase shares, the largest crypto exchange in the U.S., fell by 9.05% after the SEC lawsuit against Binance.
Then The SEC filed a lawsuit against Coinbase itself, and there was a slump of approximately -16%.
At the same time, during the last 24 hours, the outflow of funds from Binance has exceeded $1 billion.
Okay. Out of nowhere, suddenly, there's a lot of stuff going on.
Of course, both exchanges had official responses to the situation, which can be summed up by one of CZ's recent tweets.
Once again, regarding the charges:
13 charges were made against Binance and CZ. Here's the summary:
- Binance deceived regulators and the U.S government. The SEC alleges that CZ and Binance secretly controlled Binance.US. The exchange mixed customers' money with its own and transferred it to CZ's accounts. They allowed American clients to trade on Binance, although they said the opposite.
- Just like in the case with Binance, the SEC accuses Coinbase of violating securities laws.
The SEC statement says:
"Coinbase has never registered with the SEC as a broker, national securities exchange, or clearing agency. Thus, Coinbase is avoiding the disclosure regime that Congress has set up for securities markets. Meanwhile, Coinbase earns billions of dollars in revenue, particularly from transaction fees from investors, whom Coinbase has deprived of disclosure and protection that registration entails."
Everything could have proceeded relatively calmly if not for a subtle but significant detail in the allegations against Binance and CZ.
Beyond the accusations of improper registration of the exchange, broker, and clearing operations, and the purported control and management of Binance's American division by CZ, the lawsuit discreetly mentioned that the SEC considers tokens such as SOL, ADA, MATIC, FIL, ATOM, SAND, MANA, ALGO, and AXS to be securities.
The market couldn't ignore such declarations and responded with a sharp decline.
The SEC didn't think that yesterday's market reaction and the extent of its fall were sufficient, so in addition to Coinbase suit they expanded the list of "securities" to include CHZ, FLOW, ICP, NEAR, VGX, DASH, and NEXO.
Considering the outflow of funds from crypto funds over the past one and a half months, it's possible that someone knew something, but this is not certain.
All we can do is stock up on popcorn and wait to see how events will unfold this week to make a balanced decision on how to proceed.
TL;DR: The SEC has filed lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase. Binance and CZ face 13 charges, including deceiving regulators and secretly controlling Binance.US. Coinbase is accused of violating securities laws and avoiding necessary disclosures.
COOL FACTS TUESDAY
Let's take a look at this SEC-related news from a different angle!
For example, despite all the FUD, CZ boasts about appearing on Chinese CCTV.
And interestingly, despite the described outflow of funds (already over a billion), whales have begun to stock up on Binance.
Due to the market drop, companies such as Cumberland, FalconX, and FBG Capital moved stablecoins to the exchange ($67 million, $30 million, and $44 million respectively).
In addition to this, a large NFT holder, machibigbrother.eth, sent all his NFTs from the BAYC and MAYC collections (worth a total of 2900 ETH, more than $5 million) to Binance as a sign of support for the exchange.
So, while the SEC is attacking… Many others are showing support.