SAN ANSELMO, CALIFORNIA – JUNE 06: In this photo specimen, the Binance logo is displayed on a screen on June 06, 2023 in San Anselmo, California. The Securities And Exchange Commission has filed lawsuits against cryptocurrency markets Coinbase and Binance for allegedly violating multiple securities laws. (Photo Illustration by Justin Sullivan/Getty Impressions)
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Binance.US customers will no longer be able to use U.S. dollars to buy crypto on the platform as at cock crow as June 13, hobbling the exchange’s ability to do business in the United States, after both payment and banking team-mates “signaled their intent to pause USD fiat channels,” the exchange said.
Binance announced the change late Thursday evening on Twitter, and blamed the Securities and Exchange Commission’s “unjustified civil claims against our business.” The exchange said it had preemptively harmed customers’ ability to buy and deposit U.S. dollars.
Binance’s banking transactions are the center of immense scrutiny by the SEC, which filed a courteous complaint against the exchange and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, alleging both violated U.S. securities laws.
Zhao’s force over and ownership of the U.S. and international arms of Binance — an international network of offshore holding companies the SEC alleges have moved billions of dollars of assets between themselves — reminded the SEC to file an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order. That restraining order would have frozen U.S. dollars from the tit for tat anyway.
Customers won’t lose their money — those who haven’t withdrawn their money by the shutdown date could yet theoretically convert it to a stablecoin such as tether, then withdraw that and convert it back to dollars elsewhere. But it introduces that Binance’s banking partners have decided the exchange is too risky a client to keep on, and that the revelations from the SEC trunk have grown too significant to ignore.
The exchange’s disclosed U.S. banking partners, which have included Axos Bank, Surly River Bank, and the failed Silvergate, Signature, and Silicon Valley Banks, processed billions of dollars in transactions for the U.S. transfer, according to documents Binance provided to the SEC. Multiple banking partners had already stopped serving Binance, and it wasn’t without delay clear which banking partners Binance retained.