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Cryptocurrency Archive

Archives for June 2023

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
“We always have a way for whales.”

This quote is familiar from the CFTC complaint, but has more context. Here’s chief compliance officer Samuel Lim in 2020:

“[T]he best way I can think of is to onboard with US exchange ... but we let them trade on .com through a special arrangement.” He further explained, “[W]e ask them to onboard with US, and then if their volume is really very big ... we will push hard on .com side to accept it on an exceptional basis ... we always have a way for whales ... either we do it, or [a competitor crypto trading platform] does it.”

The CFTC complaint has some other funny Lim-isms from this exchange:

“Then if their volume is really very big we will push hard on .com to accept it on an exceptional basis ... CZ will definitely agree to this lol.” Lim continued: “but they need to really be doing sick ass volumes.”

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
“We cannot be held accountable for it.”

Zhao, my god, what are you doing. In another weekly meeting about the US VIP compliance stuff:

We do need to let users know that they can change their KYC on Binance.com and continue to use it. But the message, the message needs to be finessed very carefully because whatever we send will be public. We cannot be held accountable for it.

Well, baby, it’s public now!

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
I am getting the impression that Changpeng Zhao has written some memos he may regret.

Besides the VPN thing, the complaint alleges that Zaho himself “Zhao directed Binance to encourage certain U.S.-based VIP customers to circumvent the new KYC restrictions by submitting updated KYC information that omitted any U.S. nexus.”

Here’s what he said in a weekly meeting:

We don’t want to lose all the VIPs which actually contribute to quite a large number of volume. So ideally we would help them facilitate registering companies or moving the trading volume offshore in some way—in a way that we can accept without them being labeled completely U.S. to us.

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
I’d tell you to take a shot every time this report mentions VPNs, but I suspect if you do, you will die of alcohol poisoning.

Anyway, VPNs were a major part of the CFTC complaint, and now here we see another person advising in writing that VPNs were a strategic asset for Binance:

The Binance Consultant also recommended that Binance take steps to “reduce the attractiveness of enforcement” by U.S. regulators concerning the Binance.com Platform. This included publicly “restrict[ing] US persons’ access to the main Binance site” while privately encouraging U.S. customers to bypass these restrictions through the “strategic treatment” of virtual private networks (“VPNs”) that would disguise their locations and thereby “minimize [the] economic impact” of Binance’s public proclamations that it was prohibiting U.S investors on the platform.

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
It is my job to put dumb stuff in writing but I’ve never put anything this dumb in writing!

Ohhhhh my godd:

As to the SEC, the Binance Consultant also recommended that, “just for publicity,” the Tai Chi entity should “release a long and detailed Howey Test Asset-Evaluation Framework ... to show Howey test sophistication” and then engage with the SEC to discuss the “formation or acquisition of a broker/dealer or alternative trading system (ATS), with no expectation of success and solely to pause potential enforcement efforts.”

Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
A significant portion of the allegation so far is about project “Tai Chi.”

The SEC alleges this was a deliberate strategy to evade regulatory enforcement, and has been reported on. Anyway, a consultant who operated a US crypto trading firm (👀) made some suggestions:

the Binance Consultant recommended steps to “insulate Binance from US Enforcement.” Those steps included having “[k]ey Binance personnel continue to operate from non-US locations to avoid enforcement risk” and ensuring that “[c]ryptocurrency wallets and key servers continue to be hosted at non-US locations to avoid asset forfeiture.”

The NFT NewsThe NFT News
Verge Staff