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When Binance agreed to a $4.3 billion settlement with the US Department of Justice (DoJ), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), it agreed to allow two government agencies to appoint compliance monitors within the company. As a result, Binance agreed to let the DoJ monitor its operations for three years and FinCEN for five. After a lengthy bidding process, the DoJ picked Forensic Risk Alliance (FRA) to operate its monitorship while, according to Bloomberg, law firm Sullivan & Cromwell will likely fulfill FinCEN’s. Never before in the history of Binance has such an expansive surveillance apparatus existed. Indeed, as the world’s largest crypto exchange and hub for tens of millions of crypto traders around the world, these DoJ and FinCEN monitorships are arguably the most powerful and comprehensive government surveillance operations in the history of crypto. US crypto su...

U.S. prosecutors are trying to prevent Changpeng Zhao from returning to the United Arab Emirates before his sentencing . The Department of Justice (DOJ) has pressed a Seattle federal judge on Nov. 22 to require Binance founder Changpeng Zhao to stay in the U.S. before his sentencing , Reuters has reported, citing a court filing. According to prosecutors, Zhao poses a “serious risk of flight” as he has “minimal ties to the U.S.” and, therefore, should remain in the country ahead of his sentencing hearing scheduled on Feb. 23, 2024. Under the current terms of agreement, Zhao can leave the U.S., after singing a $175 million personal recognizance bond. He also locked $15 million in a trust account as part of the agreement. You might also like: Changpeng Zhao’s journey: from McDonald’s to crypto magnate However, prosecutors emphasized in a Wednesday filing that the $175 million bond is outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. legal system, making it extrem...

The trading volume on Binance.US has massively declined over the past few months. A recent report from Kaiko revealed that the weekly volume on the exchange had registered a 99.2% fall from its yearly high. Specifically, from $5 billion, the number was down to $40 million. Binance US's weekly trade volume has fallen from a yearly high of nearly $5bn to just $40mn. pic.twitter.com/1imacBf9cA — Kaiko (@KaikoData) September 18, 2023 As pointed out in the graph, when the market rallied in Q1, the volume settled on the exchange was fairly high. However, when the correction phase set in, things started going downhill for Binance.US. In fact, as pointed out in the graphic, the SEC’s lawsuit filing made things worse for the exchange. In Q2 2023, the SEC alleged that Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao [a.k.a. CZ] and Guangying ‘Helina’ Chen redirected billions of customer funds to firms controlled by Zhao via intermediary companies. Instead of outrightly ru...

On Thursday, the US Department of Justice’s bankruptcy watchdog called for an independent probe into the collapse of the FTX Group. It said that a neutral party should investigate the crypto exchange for allegations pertaining to “fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, misconduct, and mismanagement.” The US Trustee—that is a part of the Department of Justice that oversees Bankruptcy court—has asked FTX ’s Bankruptcy judge to appoint an examiner to look into the company’s insolvency proceedings. The examiner would publish a public report on FTX ’s collapse and veer into allegations of wrongdoing.  US Trustee Andrew Vara wrote in a court document,  “An examiner could—and should—investigate the substantial and serious allegations of fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, misconduct, and mismanagement” by FTX . The official document also outlined that the examiner should also probe “the circumst...