The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently brought forth a series of charges against Coinbase and Binance, both prominent global cryptocurrency exchanges. In a span of less than 24 hours, the SEC filed lawsuits against major players in the cryptocurrency industry.
The first lawsuit targeted Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and its CEO and founder, Changpeng Zhao. Shortly after, Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, faced a similar lawsuit.
According to a recent newsletter by analyst Lark Davivs, a massive amount of nearly $100 million worth of Bitcoin was withdrawn within a single day this week. This withdrawal resulted in a record-breaking number of 94,466 unique Bitcoin addresses, marking an all-time high in terms of Bitcoin transactions.
“Over $100 million in #Bitcoin has been moved out of Binance in 1 day. Binance US has also halted USD deposits. Is Binance heading toward bankruptcy?”
SEC chief Gary Gensler said, “All we have to show is that one of them is a security and they should be properly registering and having rule books against fraud and manipulation as an exchange, broker, and the like.”
According to data from DeFillama, traders using Binance US withdrew approximately $78.48 million on June 7 from the platform, even though they had been given assurances regarding the security of their funds.
The total value of tokens held by Binance.US on the Ethereum chain is reported to be around $321 million, suggesting that the outflows accounted for a significant portion of this amount.
Bitcoin Magazine CEO, David Bailey, also said in a tweet: “Major custodian about to declare bankruptcy without last minute bailout.”
Binance U.S recently said, “Until recently – despite years of engagement – the SEC Staff has not expressed a concern about the safety of customer assets. And through near around-the-clock dialogue over the past week, company’s counsel addressed SEC Staff’s concerns regarding the safety of customer assets.”
