The SEC is out for crypto blood with Binance and Coinbase the giants they intend to topple. But what is the lawsuit about, what’s in it, and what does this mean for the industry?
Token Gamer and NFT Insider have decided to combine forces to launch a weekly podcast, Mint One (formerly WAX Lyrical). John Nichols of NFT Insider and I will discuss a new topic every week, as well as feature special guests. If there’s a topic you’d like us to cover, make sure you let us know through the Token Gamer Discord or Twitter, or the NFT Insider Discord or Twitter.
In the last episode, John and I are joined by Eddie Fear, Game Director at Skyweaver. This week, we peer into the dark battle that’s unfolding between the crypto exchange giants and the U.S’s SEC.
Mint One Podcast, Episode 67: Binance Vs. The SEC
Binance is one of the biggest names in crypto along with its co-founder and CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ). Binance, along with Coinbase, are currently being sued by the SEC for operating unregistered securities exchanges, though Binance is also being sued for several other complaints.
Although we do not have a full breakdown of what is in these complaints, there have been overviews published by the SEC and they are aggressive. There is also one accusation of Binance that they mingled user funds with their related companies, which is a familiar red flag. What has unsettled me the most about this lawsuit, even in its infancy, is the PR smear campaign the SEC is putting on.
Today we charged Binance Holdings Ltd. (Binance); U.S.-based affiliate, BAM Trading Services Inc., which, together with Binance, operates https://t.co/swcxioZKVP; and their founder, Changpeng Zhao, with a variety of securities law violations.https://t.co/H1wgGgR5ir pic.twitter.com/IWTb7Et86H
— U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (@SECGov) June 5, 2023
The above tweet is a perfect example. Not only is this post what you might expect from a teenage TikTok influencer rather than a leading governmental organization for the United States, but it is alleged that it is pulled completely out of context. Several sources suggest that this quote was the Binance CCO pretending to be the SEO in an internal chat — the polar opposite of the insinuation here.
It is a messy, complex, and important situation for crypto and Web3, so we had to go down the rabbit hole and give an overview of the situation as it stands.
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