Cetoex News – The cryptocurrency exchange Binance and the Securities and Exchange Commission have been going through a dispute for a good few days. The SEC recently initiated a lawsuit against the exchange, raising concerns on various fronts.

Furthermore, the SEC filed a request for a temporary restraining order against Binance.US. However, this particular request was dismissed by Judge Jackson, a decision made in the legal process. It is worth noting that Binance has also submitted an application for deregistration as a crypto service provider in Cyprus in recent times.

Amidst the lawsuit, the American wing of CZ’s exchange has witnessed a drop in market share.

Bitcoin Tumbles Below $25K After Fed Decision

Binance.US witnesses a drop in market share

According to The Block’s Data Dashboard, Binance.US’s market share compared to a group of similar exchanges has experienced a significant decline, reaching 4.35% as of June 18. This marks a notable decrease from its previous market share of over 16% in April 2023. In contrast, Binance’s market share has seen a slight increase compared to the previous month.

CZ’s exchange was one of the sturdiest in the struggling bear market of 2022. However, the exchange seems to be stuck in an endless loophole of regulatory tussles with the SEC.

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Cetoex News – Binance.US, Binance and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao, have officially filed their first response to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit issued last week. Moreover, the exchange has argued that the regulator’s insistence on a restraining order would essentially shut down the business. 

The SEC had called for an asset freeze against the US arm of Binance. Subsequently, the exchange has filed an answer that seeks a rejection of the request made by the regulator. Specifically due to the detrimental implications if the temporary restraining order is granted. 

Binance Officially Responds to SEC Charges in Court

The digital asset industry was caught off guard last week when the US regulatory agency filed a lot of charges against Binance. Not only does it target the exchange, its American arm, and its CEO, but it also issues similar charges against Coinbase. All centered around the sale of unregistered securities. 

Now, the exchange has been heard. Specifically, Binance has filed its first response to the SEC lawsuit. Indeed, the exchange has argued in court over the regulator’s application for a temporary restraining order. Explaining that such an action would have a dire impact on its operations. 

Coindesk reported Binance.US proclamation that such an order would “prevent it from paying employees, vendors, or anyone else.” The response went as far as to refer to the action as seeking “unnecessary and unjustified relief.” Ultimately calling the request, “draconian.”

Moreover, the filed response has also previewed the defense against the SEC’s charges. The court battle begins now, with the allegations made against the SEC being tested for the first time today.

Conversely, the case judge responded. “No additional argument or explication may be submitted by any party at this time,” they ordered, according to reports. Although it is certainly not groundbreaking, it could suggest the judge’s mindset. Specifically, they may not be comfortable with a full temporary asset freeze. But will seek some sort of limitation on access to the company’s funds. 

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Cetoex News – The world of finance is ever-evolving. Innovation led to the advent of crypto and DeFi. As a result, the sector is now divided into traditional finance and modern finance. Bloomb of the billionaires have surpassed Warren Buffett in terms of net worth as of yet. Nevertheless, they represent “a new era” of financial wealth accumulation. Citadel exec tops the list

First up on the list is Ken Griffin, the Chief Executive Officer of Citadel. He’s also the founder of Citadel Securities, a global market-making business. The former is a hedge fund management company. It boasts $59 billion in equities, fixed income, macro, commodities, etc. The latter takes care of around 40% of all U.S. retail trading volume.

Griffin earned about $4.1 billion from his hedge fund last year. This feat was achievable, for Citadel’s flagship fund, Wellington, fetched investors 38%. In all, Griffin’s total wealth stood at $35 billion, helping him claim the top spot.

Next on the list is Susquehanna’s founder, Jeff Yass. This executive’s trading firm is fairly unconventional. Instead of relying on investors, this proprietary firm trades using its own capital. The company focuses on derivatives but also makes private equity and venture capital investments around the world. Parallelly, it also operates a sports-betting business. According to Bloomberg, Yass’ wealth reflected a total value of $33.1 billion, helping him grab the second position.

Binance’s CZ makes a cut to the top-3

With a fortune of $28.2 billion, Binance executive Changpeng Zhao featured next on the list. The world’s largest crypto exchange by volume has over 120 million users. Before founding Binance, Zhao worked on trading systems. According to Bloomberg’s early-April estimates, its annual revenue was more than $12 billion.

Just a day back, Binance’s U.S. arm terminated its $1 billion asset purchase agreement with Voyager. Chalking out the reason for the termination, the exchange revealed that “the hostile and uncertain regulatory climate in the United States has introduced an unpredictable operating environment impacting the entire American business community.”

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Cetoex News – Binance will withdraw from the Canadian marketplace, the network announced today.

“We would like to thank those regulators who worked with us collaboratively to address the needs of Canadian users,” the tweet from Binance says. “Albeit a small market, it held sentimental value for us as the home country of our founder.”

We had high hopes for the rest of the Canadian blockchain industry. Unfortunately, new guidance related to stablecoins and investor limits provided to crypto exchanges makes the Canada market no longer tenable for Binance at this time. We put off this decision as long as we could to explore other reasonable avenues to protect our Canadian users, but it has become apparent that there are none.Binance Official Announcement via Twitter

The remaining Canadian Binance users are currently receiving emails on how their Binance accounts will be impacted. Recently, Canada began advocating for stricter regulation on crypto platforms, which Binance disagrees with. Hence why Binance will withdraw from the Canadian marketplace.

“We are confident that we will someday return to the market when Canadian users once again have the freedom to access a broader suite of digital assets,” Binance concludes.

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Cetoex News – Binance is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges out there. However, network congestion and other issues definitely affect even the largest players in the industry.

The largest cryptocurrency exchange recently announced that it has halted Bitcoin (BTC) withdrawals.

Binance halts Bitcoin (BTC) withdrawal

According to the details of a recent announcement, the exchange has halted Bitcoin (BTC) withdrawals. The exchange cited BTC network issues, stating that they are experiencing congestion.

CZ’s exchange also mentioned that the team is currently working on a fix until the network is stabilized. They also reassured the community that the funds are SAFU and that the withdrawals will be reopened as soon as possible.

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What is PEPE?

PEPE is the latest meme coin to soar in value and capture the crypto industry’s attention. It’s based on the artist Matt Furie’s Pepe the Frog.

Over the past week, the token has risen by a whopping 1,000%, per Coingecko. It’s now the 45th-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, overtaking Fantom’s native FTM token as well as The Sandbox’s SAND token.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has confirmed the listing of Floki Inu (FLOKI) and PEPE in the Innovation Zone on its platform. According to the firm, a listing fee of 0 BNB applies to trade pairs featuring the duo of FLOKI and PEPE.

As per a published statement, Binance also ascertained that by the latter part of today, the exchange would have opened trading for the spot pairs like FLOKI/USDT, FLOKI/TUSD, PEPE/USDT, PEPE/TUSD.

Hence, users are encouraged to start depositing any or both of the two memecoins in anticipation of trading. Deposits of FLOKI and PEPE will be made possible from today but users will not be allowed to withdraw until May 6th.

Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Binance previously hinted that the exchange was skeptical about listing PEPE citing the fact that the meme coin lacks transparency and has a high-risk nature. During one of his ‘Ask Me Anything’ sessions, CZ showed his approval of Shiba Inu over the cartoon-characterized meme coin PEPE.

“We don’t like coins that have a very small circulating supply… but they have a large total supply in reserve,” he said in a Twitter Spaces held earlier this month, adding that “with a tiny bit of circulating supply, some of the coins are famous and people want them as price is going really high. But then as more supply comes into circulation the price may drop, well most likely will drop or at least have a higher risk of dropping. We try to avoid it.”

At the same time, he also pointed out that he was not directly involved in listings.

“We actually have strict policies that even if we are talking with a project team, we forbid them disclosing anything about listings, etc,” Zhao added.

FLOKI, PEPE, Other Memecoin Gain Attention

Considering the earlier stance of CZ, it came as a surprise when the exchange confirmed the listings. About 48 hours after the listing goes live, both FLOKI and PEPE will be added as new borrowable assets on Isolated Margins alongside their new margin pairs FLOKI/USDT, and PEPE/USDT.

The announcement seems to have caused some excitement in the market as PEPE saw a surge of over 40%, while FLOKI increased by over 60%.

FLOKI has been on other top cryptocurrency exchanges before now but the listing with Binance has been anticipated for a very long time. In March, KoinBX, a leading cryptocurrency exchange, announced plans to list FLOKI to trade with USDT and INR trading pairs. Generally, there has been a rave about FLOKI and many other memecoins

The platform behind the memecoin Floki has proved its utility over time with several solutions like a crypto debit card, a Non-Fungible Token (NFT)-based game, and various NFT collections.

]Cetoex News – According to the data from on-chain crypto analysis firm Coinglass, Bitcoin’s (BTC) balance on Binance has shot up by 51,622.03 BTC, or by nearly $1.5 billion, in the last 30 days. Although other prominent exchanges have also witnessed an increase in BTC balance, Binance’s share far outshines the other platform.

Kraken takes the second spot with an 1131 BTC increase in the last 30 days. Coinbase on the other hand, saw its BTC balance decrease by 583.93 BTC. However, the exchange did see an increase of 704.97 BTC in the last 24 hours.

Is the increased Bitcoin balance on Binance a signal of a sell-off?

The sudden increase in Bitcoin’s (BTC) balance on Binance has fueled fears of a potential sell-off. By historical standards, the selling pressure has been quite low, but on-chain data indicated that this might quickly alter going forward. Recent investor behaviors may provide more pressure on bulls to flip $30,000 to support and continue rising. The volume of historical transactions at that level is at an all-time high, thus the significance of $30,000 goes beyond mere sentiment.

In the meantime, the trading platform Decentrader’s current analysis of exchange liquidity reveals that the $35,000 price range is a crucial one for closing leveraged BTC short bets.

According to Decentrader, there are more BTC shorts than longs. The firm highlighted that the development takes place when “we’ve seen nearly $1 billion in Open Interest return.” This could suggest that a lot of people are shorting the $30k resistance.

However, if the woes around the U.S. Dollar continue, we might just a sudden inflow of funds into alternate assets such as cryptocurrencies. This could potentially lead to BTC breaking past current resistance levels. Bitcoin (BTC) is currently facing resistance at around $30k, with support at $27.79k.

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Cetoex News – Voyager Digital, a crypto lending company that has declared bankruptcy, has reached an agreement with the U.S. Federal Government. As a result, the company will proceed with its $1 billion transaction with Binance.US, with the crypto exchange selling assets worth $1 billion to Binance’s American subsidiary.

The Voyager deal has met with several ups and downs, with the government halting the deal. Now that the government has waved the green flag, Binance.US will acquire all the assets of Voyager.

According to the details from DeBank, Voyager currently holds stablecoins and digital assets worth $257,400,495.

Voyager holds over 3.1 trillion Shiba Inu

A detailed look at Voyager’s holdings reveals that the cryptocurrency lender has over 3.1 trillion Shiba Inu in its wallet. The current value of these holdings is around $32 million. USDC accounts for the majority of the holdings, with ETH right behind.

Despite previous challenges, it appears that the deal has been successfully negotiated. Like many other companies, Voyager Digital suffered financial losses during the 2022 bear market. With the deal finally coming to a conclusion, Binance.US will receive over 3.1 trillion Shiba Inu. The recent deal will also strengthen the presence of the exchange in the US.

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Cetoex News – Binance has garnered significant media attention in the wake of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) decision to press charges against Changpeng Zhao’s firm. The CFTC unleashed several charges against the exchange and also the exchange’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao.

To add to the ongoing trouble, the Financial Times has released a report on Binance. The report states that CZ’s exchange hid significant links to China for several years. According to the report, the details were identified after reviewing the exchange’s internal company documents.

Binance’s CZ reportedly instructed employees to hide its Chinese presence

The Financial Times mentioned in its report that CZ and other senior executives reportedly instructed the employees to conceal the presence of the exchange in China. Binance’s presence in China reportedly included an office that was in use until late 2019. Additionally, there was also a Chinese bank that was utilized to pay salaries to certain employees.

A company message by Zhao seen by FT states: “We no longer publish our office addresses . . . people in China can directly say that our office is not in China.”

The report also mentioned that Zhao has conveyed to most of its employees that the exchange left China after the country began scrutinizing cryptocurrencies in 2017. The latest report from the Financial Times adds to the already-piled-up allegations against CZ’s exchange.

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Cetoex News – Binance has recently been the focus of substantial media coverage following the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) decision to file charges against the company. The CFTC has brought several charges against both the exchange and its CEO. Additionally, Binance faces further complications as a result of a report by the Financial Times. The report alleges that the exchange, led by CZ, concealed significant connections to China for an extended period of time.

Just days after all this chaos, Binance, CZ, and other influencers are struck with a new lawsuit for the promotion of unregistered securities.

Binance, CZ and influencers struck with a new lawsuit

CZ, the exchange, and three influencers were named in a $1 billion lawsuit filed by the Moscowitz Law Firm and Boies Schiller Flexner. The lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of Florida. According to the report from Fortune, the charges are based on claims that the exchange was involved in trading unregistered securities and also paid influencers to do unlawful promotion.

The lawsuit reads: “This is a classic example of a centralized exchange, which is promoting the sale of an unregistered security. We’ve been investigating these same unreigistered security issues against Binance for over a year.”

Those close to the matter noted that the influencers and exchanges promoting the ‘unregistered securities’ “would be liable” for consumer’s financial losses. The lawsuit also states that investors do not have to prove they were influenced at all by the ads and that millions of people could receive potential damages.

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