Binance's Efforts to Woo SEC Chairman Gensler for US Regulatory Relations Uncovered – Here's What Happened
Binance approached US Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Gary Gensler in 2018 and 2019 to become an advisor for the firm. That’s according to a new bombshell report published by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, which claims that Binance embarked on a campaign to “neutralize” US authorities out of fear of prosecution, citing messages and documents from 2018 to 2020.
At the time, Gensler was teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and had previously worked as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). At the time, a Binance employee said to colleagues that Gensler was likely to move “back in a regulators seat if Dems win the 2020 election”.
Gensler, who became chairman of the SEC in April 2021, declined the offer to become an advisor to Binance. However, Gensler “was generous in sharing license strategies,” with Binance executives, according to Harry Zhou, who met with Gensler in October 2018 alongside at-the-time head of Binance’s venture capital division Ella Zhang.
Gensler also held a video call with Binance founder Changpeng Zhao in March 2019, interviewing him for a cryptocurrency course he would be teaching starting in summer 2019 at MIT.
Binance’s efforts to butter up US regulators comes amid fears that the cryptocurrency exchange might fall fowl of a regulatory crackdown in the country. And the US crypto crackdown has been ramping up in recent weeks, with the SEC recently taking action against Kraken over its crypto staking service and accusing USD-backed Binance USD (BUSD) stablecoin issuer Paxos of issuing an unlicensed security.
Meanwhile, according to reports in the crypto press from the weekend, staff at the agency believe that Binance.US, Binance’s US subsidiary, is
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