On June 7, several coins and tokens listed on Binance.US, the US affiliate of global cryptocurrency exchange Binance, started to decouple from its fair value to trade with premiums. Currencies like Bitcoin (BTC)) and Ether (ETH) were trading at $27,445 and $1,911, respectively, against the CoinMarketCap averages of $26,490 and $1,850.
Meanwhile, stablecoinx like Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) broke their face value to trade at $1.03 and $1.04, respectively. On the same day, Binance.US removed more than a dozen trading pairs based on USDT, it paused its over-the-counter trading portal and limited the maximum trading amount of its buy, sell and conversion services to USD 10,000.
Furthermore, according to their support page, Binance.US transfer deposits were declared as “temporarily unavailable”, while withdrawals are “working normally”. However, the exchange also stated that US dollar-based payment methods, including debit cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay, were also temporarily disabled for some users due to the “channel change.”
Aside from the funding issues, investors were also affected by an emergency motion by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to freeze Binance.US assets and repatriate US client funds. In response, Binance staff wrote:
“Users’ assets remain safe and secure and the platform remains fully operational with deposits and withdrawals running as normal.”
On June 5, the SEC sued Binance, alleging the operations of an unregistered exchange in the US along with the sale of unregistered securities. The commission also accused the exchange of “mixing” and “diverting” investor funds. Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, received a civil summons to respond to the allegations on June 7.
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