US Judge Allows Major Portion of SEC Lawsuit Against Binance and CZ to Proceed
A United States court has ruled against cryptocurrency exchange Binance’s attempt to dismiss the majority of claims leveled against it by the country’s securities regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
According to the court filing by Judge Amy Berman Jackson on June 28, claims related to Binance’s staking program, the sale of BNB tokens following its initial coin offering, and anti-fraud violations will proceed.
The court also upheld the SEC’s contention that former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao acted as a “control person” and that Binance was obligated to register under the Exchange Act.
However, the ruling wasn’t a complete victory for the SEC.
Judge Jackson decided to dismiss claims relating to BNB secondary market sales and all sales associated with the Binance USD (BUSD) stablecoin.
In her decision, she referred to Judge Analisa Torres’ ruling in the SEC’s case against Ripple as supporting grounds for dismissing the SEC’s claim regarding BNB secondary market sales.
The court’s decision came as a surprise to finance lawyer Scott Johnsson, who described it as a significant setback for the securities regulator.
Fox Business reporter Eleanor Terrett anticipates that lawyers representing Coinbase, Kraken, and Consensys will leverage this opinion to strengthen their positions in their respective litigations.
You can fully expect @coinbase, @krakenfx and @Consensys lawyers to use this opinion to bolster their positions in their own litigations.
And the @SECGov lawyers can no longer argue that the @Ripple ruling was merely an outlier that no other judges agree with. https://t.co/xC4VOtJvOX
— Eleanor Terrett (@EleanorTerrett) June 29, 2024
Judge Jackson also rejected the SEC’s claims concerning Binance’s passive
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