US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a lawsuit against Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and its CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) for violating securities trading rules.
Upon the news, the price of Binance’s native token, BNB, dropped by 6%.
The SEC states that it considers both BNB and the branded stablecoin BUSD as securities. The issuance of BUSD was prohibited by US regulators in February.
The lawsuit also indicates that, in addition to the two Binance-related cryptocurrencies, the regulator considers Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), Polygon (MATIC), Filecoin (FIL), Cosmos (ATOM), Sandbox (SAND), Decentraland (MANA), Algorand (ALGO), Axie Infinity (AXS), and COTI (COTI) coins as securities.
CZ stated that the exchange continues to operate normally and will release an official statement once the team has reviewed the document.
In late March, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a lawsuit against Binance and its executives, seeking to completely ban the largest cryptocurrency exchange from the American market, accusing it of facilitating illegal activities and engaging in trading manipulations.
The accusations were also directed at the exchange itself, its CEO Changpeng Zhao, and former compliance director Samuel Lim. According to the regulator, they knowingly allowed Americans to trade cryptocurrency derivatives without a license, which is a serious violation of US laws.
The CFTC also claimed that Binance intentionally assisted large American clients in bypassing its own compliance procedures, including anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) rules. The regulator further alleged that the exchange tacitly encouraged the use of VPNs to circumvent restrictions.
