The US financial authorities are ramping up their efforts to save the dollar from tumbling into the debt abyss and fend off competition from crypto. Yesterday, the SEC filed 13 charges against Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao for alleged securities law violations. The Commission claims that the company subverted its own controls "to secretly allow high-value US customers to continue trading" on the exchange, despite publicly claiming that US customers were restricted from doing so.
The SEC also charged Binance with misleading investors about non-existent trading controls over the Binance.US platform. It further alleges that Sigma Chain, a trading company owned by Zhao, artificially inflated the trading volume of crypto assets on the Binance.US platform by means of so-called wash trading – a form of manipulation by which an actor simultaneously sells and buys the same assets creating a false impression of market activity without incurring any risk. The list goes on.
"Through 13 charges, we allege that Zhao and Binance entities engaged in an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure, and calculated evasion of the law," said SEC Chair Gary Gensler.
The lawsuit filed against Binance has extended the list of crypto assets deemed as unregistered securities to at least 61, spanning over $115 billion, according to the estimation by Bloomberg.
In the complaint, SEC cited ten cryptocurrencies as falling into the category of securities: BNB, Binance USD, Solana, Cardano, Polygon, Cosmos, The Sandbox, Decentraland, Axie Infinity, and COTI. Other cryptocurrencies, including XRP and LBRY Credits, were targeted by the SEC separately.
