​Binance CEO denies the CFTC’s charges of violating US law

What’s new? Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao commented on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) complaint filed in a Chicago court on March 27. In it, the regulator accused Zhao and Binance of violating trading and derivatives rules and knowingly avoiding compliance requirements, including customer identification and anti-money laundering (KYC/AML), to maximize profits. Zhao called the complaint “unexpected and disappointing,” given the fact that the platform has cooperated with the CFTC for more than two years.

Material on the Binance website

How Zhao responded to the CFTC’s claims? The head of Binance disagreed with many of the allegations, noting that the lawsuit presents an incomplete statement of facts. Zhao believes that Binance’s regulatory compliance technology is best-in-class. Binance.com was the first global (non-US) exchange to implement mandatory KYC procedures and has some of the highest standards in KYC and AML. The platform automatically blocks US users by calculating them based on numerous parameters.

Zhao stressed that Binance is committed to cooperation and transparency in dealing with regulators and law enforcement in the United States and around the world. The platform has processed more than 55 000 requests from them and helped freeze or seize more than $125 million in 2022 and $160 million in 2023.

In addition, Binance.com has the largest number of licenses and registrations in the world, in 16 countries. Zhao also said that Binance does not trade for profit or manipulate the market under any circumstances. There is a 90-day trading ban for employees of the exchange: they are not allowed to sell a coin within 90 days of purchase, and vice versa. There is also a ban for staff to trade futures and certain tokens for employees who have access to private information on listings, Launchpad, etc.

“I observe these policies myself strictly. I also never participated in Binance Launchpad, Earn, Margin, or Futures. I know the best use of my time is to build a solid platform that services our users,” Zhao concluded.

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Earlier, a similar statement was made by the senior management of the US crypto exchange Coinbase. On March 22, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) notified the platform of possible violations and plans to take enforcement action against it. In response, the executives of the exchange noted that they had been actively cooperating with the SEC over the past nine months, and in March they also asked the commission to clarify the rules for working with cryptocurrencies but instead received threats from the court.