US Regulators Probe Binance’s BNB Token
Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, is being investigated by U.S. regulators over its BNB token as a security, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into whether Binance should have registered the initial coin offering of the Binance coin as a security, according to people familiar with the matter. The probe is in its early stages and may not lead to any enforcement action, they said.
The SEC is reportedly looking into whether Binance violated securities laws when it conducted the ICO in 2017.
Binance has become one of the most popular crypto exchanges in recent years, thanks in part to its aggressive expansion strategy. The company has been expanding rapidly into new markets and launched a decentralized exchange earlier this year.
Its native token, the Binance coin, has also surged in value amid the bull market for cryptocurrencies. The current market value for Binance Coin is $ 48.13 billion USD, and the live price of BNB is $ 294.77 per (BNB / USD).
The volume of trade over the past 24 hours is $1.48 billion USD. The value of BNB relative to USD is kept up to current in real-time. In the past day, BNB has experienced a loss of 1.75 percent. It has a total supply in circulation of 163.28 million US dollars.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is examining whether Binance’s initial coin offering of its Binance coin (BNB) token in 2017 was an unregistered security offering that should have been registered with the regulatory agency, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing confidential sources.
The SEC’s investigation is in its early stages, and it is unclear whether the agency will take action against Binance, the report said. However, if the SEC were to find that Binance’s ICO was an unregistered security offering, the exchange could be subject to fines and other penalties.
This is not the first time that Binance has come under scrutiny from U.S. regulators. In March 2018, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a subpoena to the exchange as part of an investigation into the possible manipulation of bitcoin futures contracts. And last year, New York Attorney General sent a letter to Binance asking it to provide information on its operations in the state.
Similarly, in September 2018, the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) issued a warning to Binance for offering cryptocurrency investments without a license. This resulted in Binance voluntarily delisting all Maltese residents from its platform.
Binance has not commented on the latest report from Bloomberg, but the exchange has previously denied any wrongdoing.
Bloomberg reports that the SEC is also looking into market-making companies that do business with Binance and are controlled or partially owned by Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao. The person familiar with the review said that the agency is looking into whether these companies might have violated federal securities laws.
If the SEC finds that Binance has indeed violated any laws, it could mean major trouble for the company. The Exchange could be fined, or even forced to shut down its operations in the United States entirely. This would be a major blow to the crypto community, as Binance is one of the most popular and trusted exchanges currently in operation.
BNB’s history
Binance Coin, also known as BNB, is an extension of the Binance trading platform, which is the most popular cryptocurrency exchange in the world.
Binance Coin initially operated on the Ethereum blockchain network as an ERC-20 token, and it offered owners benefits such as reduced trading fees, affiliate rewards, or a lottery ticket system called “Launchpad” that allowed users to participate in new crypto projects chosen by Binance.
However, in 2019, BNB made the transition away from the Ethereum network and onto Binance’s own self-developed blockchain, which is known as the Binance Smart Chain or BSC (called BNB Chain since February 2022).
Here is where BNB began providing support for a chain that initially did not concentrate on hosting decentralized applications but rather concentrated on having high transaction speeds and the ability to manage massive quantities of traffic.
Barry Pene is a stern blockchain research/copywriter. Barry has been trading cryptos since 2017 and has been invested in issues that would put the blockchain industry on the right pedestal. Barry's research expertise cuts across blockchain as a disruptive technology, DeFis, NFTs, Web3, and reduction of energy consumption levels of cryptocurrency mining.
