SEC Accuses Binance.US of Not Cooperating With Probe: Court Filings

The state of crypto is presented by Tron connecting the world to the power of Cryptocurrency. The SEC is accusing Binance Us of not cooperating with its investigation according to newly unsealed court filings. Joining us now to discuss this Coindesk global policy and regulation managing editor Nick Day who is also the editor of everyone's favorite weekly. We read Coindesk State of crypto newsletter, Happy Friday, Nick. Good morning and Happy Friday. Ok. So first of all, very few people left at Binance Us, it seems at least on the executive side or anybody who has any responsibility. They, we, we just saw a bunch of people who would be responsible for risk and legal flee. But um there are also concerns now about custodial custodial services offered by Bin's International Arm. What's going on? What are these court filings saying, you know, the filings that we've seen unsealed, uh you know, really kind of do hint that the SEC strongly believes that, you know, Binance us is being, you know, at the very least, uh you know, a little bit misleading about how it's operating. So what's really interesting is we actually saw Binance us respond to the sealed filings earlier this week. Uh at the time, we, you know, obviously we didn't know what the sealed filings contained. But the Binance Us response from a couple of days ago uh pointed to deposition requests for people like Binance U Well, now former Binance Us, Ceo Brian Schroeder, uh more document for uh discovery production requests, things like that. And now we do have more information on, you know why the SCC is asking for this. They think that Binance Us is not complying or potentially not complying with the consent order. The two parties agreed to way back in June. Oh dear Nick. Where is CZ in all of this? Have we heard from anyone at Binance in response to any of the news that continues to come out? Uh Not yet. I did reach out to Binance Us spokesperson uh a couple of days ago after they filed their response. I did not hear back at the time. So I'll follow up what happens a good question, you know. Well, I guess we'll find out. No, I know I, I didn't get somebody just accused me of, of, of spreading Binance fud on, on youtube. Somebody like, oh, Lawrence with the Binance fud. But uh no, I, I mean, like I listen, don't, don't blame me whoever it is that just said that call up Binance Us if you can. Yeah. No, I, I mean, we'll follow up obviously as well. But um yeah, the basic issue here. It seems to be that, you know, as you mentioned, Binance Holdings International or Sorry, whatever it's called Binance Holdings Limited uh is offering this uh technology stack that Binance us is using to manage its services and keys. And the SEC is claiming that they were uh you know, not fully aware. They think that this program was recently rebranded uh in Binance response from a couple of days ago, they said that, uh, the SEC was fully aware. So I think we're probably gonna hear a little bit more on this back and forth in particular about, you know, whether or not the SEC was aware and, uh, you know, of Binance holdings limited being the, you know, providers of the service, uh, as well as what Binance us may or may not have said about that ahead of, you know, moving keys and, uh, wallet and all that off on shore. So, uh, they, they, of course, have that little bit of trouble at the CFTCW. What's next on the, uh, uh, give us a timeline here, what's going on next. So I'm really honest, I have not followed the CFTC trial in a little bit. Um I'm, there's a lot of, there's a lot of court processes happening right now. Uh, and there are only so many court cases we can follow at once. Um You're, you're, you're the, you're the walking crypto Pacer if anyone has ever used Pacer. If, if there was like Crypto Pacer, it would be Nick Day. Thank you. Um As far as I can tell the CFTC case, uh, you know, we're still kind of in, um, I don't wanna say a limbo period, but, you know, we're in that kind of early period. We're still doing the back and forth filings and such. Um, you know, a lot of these cases take years to proceed. Um, I guess my next question is, uh, you know, whether or not we'll see any further, uh, motions for judgment and, uh, things like that. I think the last thing we saw was, you know, finance filing a motion for judgment trying to just get the case kicked out. All right, Nick, thanks for joining the show. Have a good weekend. We'll see you on Monday. Try not to work too hard this weekend. We shall see that was Coindesk global policy and regulation. Managing editor Nick Day. Don't forget to sign up for the state of crypto newsletter on Coindesk dot com.