On the evening of June 5, Beijing time, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Binance, its CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ), and two other subsidiaries, BAM Trading and BAM Management, accusing the defendants of violating US securities trading rules.
In the 136-page indictment document, the SEC listed more than a dozen "major crimes" against Binance and CZ. The words were fierce and the accusations were strong, which is rare even in the Crypto industry, which has been litigating for many years.
Odaily Note: For details of the prosecution, please refer to "SEC sues Binance, CZ for securities law violations, speed-read summary of indictment》、《In-depth interpretation: the intention and story behind the SEC suing Binance documents》。
speechspeechChina said that three-quarters of cryptocurrencies are not securities), and instead carried out intensive crackdowns on Kraken, Block.One, Telegram and other leading institutions/projects in the industry, and Binance is the latest target of this series of crackdowns.
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Gensler & SBF
Prior to taking the helm of the SEC, Gensler was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he taught global economics and management practice.
This means that Gensler himself had a period of fellowship with SBF's parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, since both Joseph and Barbara are senior professors at MIT Law School.
If interdisciplinary connections still don’t seem strong enough, Gensler’s relationship with Glenn Ellison, the father of former Alameda CEO and SBF “Gossip Girl” Caroline Ellisons, deserves more.
disclosuredisclosure, Glenn also worked at MIT, and had a direct working relationship with Gensler at the time-Gensler needed to report to Glenn at the time.
In addition, since SBF himself is one of Biden's largest donors, Gensler, a Democrat, was able to take over the SEC only after Biden came to power, which also has a lot of room for imagination.
disclosuredisclosure, Gensler had several direct meetings with SBF six months before the FTX incident;accuseGensler prefers FTX and treats other exchanges such as Coinbase and Kraken differently.
After the FTX thunderstorm, the secret relationship between Gensler and SBF was also amplified, which also brought Gensler a lot of trouble. Last November, thousands of people worked on CryptoLawpetitionAsked Congress to investigate Gensler's involvement in the fraud; Congressman Tom Emmer alsotake a standIt is being investigated whether Gensler helped SBF evade supervision.
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Binance & FTX
It has been more than half a year since the FTX crash, and perhaps many people do not remember the details at that time.
Although the root cause of FTX's end is asset misappropriation, many people still believe that it was the blow of CZ and Binance that took away FTX's last straw.
Let's turn the time back to November 2022. At that time, there were some rumors about the problem of FTX's asset status in the market, but perhaps considering the development momentum of FTX at that time, the rumors did not trigger enough Pay attention to.
Until November 6, when CZ tweeted that "all FTT positions (about 530 million US dollars at the time) will be liquidated", the FUD sentiment around FTX began to heat up rapidly.
Subsequently, FTX ushered in a large number of withdrawal requests, and FTT also fell all the way below Alameda's publicly announced "acquisition price" and continued to decline. Under heavy pressure, SBF had to choose to bow to CZ, and once announced that FTX would be wholly owned by Binance acquisition.
Next, it is destined to leave a mark on the history of Crypto, and will always be haunted by conspiracy theories. Just one day after announcing the acquisition, CZ announced that FTX was suspected of improperly handling customer funds and was subject to US regulatory investigations. The acquisition plan will no longer be pursued.
Until now, many people have speculated whether CZ’s series of operations were planned in advance, and whether the announcement of the acquisition was really intended to take over, or whether it was just to obtain FTX’s financial details more clearly, so as to ensure “one-hit kill”.
Except for the person concerned, no one may know the truth. The only thing that can be confirmed is that FTX has completely come to an end. This rising star who once sat on the throne of the second largest exchange has since withdrawn from the stage of history (FTX 2.0 has not yet been seen).
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In addition to "private grievances", interests are fundamental
Although it seems reasonable to consider Gensler's resentment towards CZ and Binance from the perspective of gossip, it is only a joke after all.
Standing on Gensler's standpoint, since he took office in the SEC, he has never been soft on other industry institutions other than FTX, and Binance, as the largest and most profitable centralized entity in the Crypto industry, may have had its name as early as the first day It was recorded on Gensler's "execution list".
In other words, the SEC's action on Binance may never have been a question of "if", but a question of "when".
