The current administration does not have a lot of time left.
They’re going for it all.
This week, the CFTC of the United States filed suit against Binance for a host of different accusations.
And they brought receipts.
And those receipts are ugly.
The full story (along with the 74 page list of violations, if you’re in prison and have nothing to do) can be found here.
Some notes from what I’ve been seeing and reading over the past week:
- It appears this is stemming from things that happened back in 2019.
- It showed Binance had hundreds of its own accounts, all trading with each other (uh oh)
- Does Signal have a back door or something? Because the govt got a hold of a lot of those texts. Disturbing.
CZ came out with a not-so-comforting response on the Binance blog which can be seen here (short read).
It did not refute most of the allegations, but for legal reasons I can see why it may not have.
More analysis was needed, and the crypto media of course delivered big this week. Probably the best synapsis I saw all week was this episode of Wolf of All Streets. I will provide cliff notes below, you don’t need to watch it all if you don’t want to.
7:45 – Yeah, the crypto market doesn’t seem to care right now, but much of that is still in response to the banking crisis, and if the CFTC wins this case…
13:05 – Yes, we need those regulations, but I don’t want these pigs making them. Let’s get them out of office first.
14:20 – Gensler did like crypto at one point, but he was flipped by the banks, and became their own personal lieutenant.
16:10 – Yes, there thankfully have been judges who do their job and have not been flipped themselves yet who have pushed against the SEC, and may do the same here. CFTC really does look like they have a case though, it’s not like people are expressing outrage here.
33:30 – Yep. RIP United States. There is no benefit to being in the US and under their thumb. The US has no competitive advantage anymore. They may have high levels of brainpower, but they’ll be working for foreign companies.
44:30 – Very happy this was mentioned. Is this Ex Post Facto? Can you sue somebody for breaking the rules before the rules were around? And like Alex said, was the derivatives trading end of it illegal back then? This will come out eventually.
What It Means For Us
Nothing yet, but if the CFTC gets their way…
This will likely hurt, or even get rid of Binance.us. This will obviously affect Americans who use it, but will deal a solid blow to the balance sheet of Binance itself.
This will likely have ripple effects in the crypto market. It hasn’t much now, because it’s just a suit at this point, a lot can happen.
We have sold our BNB token months ago, and will continue to take a sit-and-wait approach. No need for hastiness either way IMO.
More on this and other important factors going on in the world of crypto on this Saturday’s podcast.
— VP