Binance saw millions of pounds worth of crypto pulled from its platform in the last 24 hours after the exchange was fined by a US regulator.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange was fined by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for several alleged breaches, including failing to restrict US customers from its platform and misleading investors about its market surveillance controls.
Over the last 24 hours, some US$780mln of crypto has been pulled from the platform, according to data company Nansen, quoted in The Telegraph.
Charges faced by Binance, all thirteen of them, echo those that FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried faced last year before its spectacular collapse.
SEC chairman Gary Gensler in a written statement that Zhao and Binance “engaged in an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure, and calculated evasion of the law”.
The impact of the legal complaint was clear to see on the crypto market, with Bitcoin down 3.8% in the last 24 hours, and 7.6% in the last week, trading at US$25,759.
Ethereum, on the other hand, lost 2.8% in the last day, and 4.7% over the last week, to US$1,817.
Binance currently processes crypto trades worth about US$65bn a day, which accounts for 70% of the market.