Binance, the bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrency exchange with the largest trading volume, reached an agreement with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) so that only its US subsidiary (Binance.US) has access to the funds of platform users in that country.
The main objective of the agreement is that the workers of the exchange, in the rest of the world, do not have access to the private keys of company walletsOK documents court proceedings, which were released on June 17.
This is one of the main points of the agreement, with which the SEC may seek to prevent the funds of Binance.US users from being transferred outside that territory. A fear that the agency expressed from the beginning of the lawsuit filed against the exchange on June 5, and for which it later requested the freezing of the money, facts reported by CriptoNoticias.
It should be noted that, in the hearing held last Tuesday to define what would happen with the funds, the district court judge, Amy Berman Jackson, ordered the parties to reach the agreement that they now present. This, after refusing to issue a temporary restraining order that would leave the assets frozen while the lawsuit progresses.
This settlement between Binance and the SEC is still missing be presented and approved by the judge.
The agreement also states that Binance.US will need to create new wallets that only employees of that affiliate will have access to. Similarly, it will have to provide the court with information about the exchange’s business expenses, as Judge Jackson had already requested.
On this topic, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, expressvia Twitter, that he is pleased to have reached an agreement on “mutually acceptable terms.”
“We were able to reach the court-ordered agreement with the SEC that allows us to continue our business as usual,” Changpeng said in his message. In this sense, it guarantees that user funds “have been and always will be safe on all platforms affiliated with Binance.”
In this way, it is clarified that the complaints and actions of justice do not affect the operations of the exchange and user funds are not at risk. In fact, the platform will continue to operate, as established in the agreement reached.
SEC indicted Binance on 13 different charges
The dispute between the SEC and Binance began a few weeks ago, when the regulator sued the exchange and its founderChangpeng Zhao, for allegedly violating the federal securities laws of the North American country.
In the lawsuit, he impute to Binance 13 different charges. One of them accuses the company of inflating its numbers in the altcoin market, “mixing” millions of dollars of investor assets with those of financial firms Merit Peak Limited and Sigma Chain, owned by Zhao.
The Commission alleged that both Binance and Coinbase, the two most important exchanges in the market, operate with unregistered assets (values). The SEC considers at least 50 cryptocurrencies and tokens to be securities. Operating with these requires the approval of the regulatory entity.
