Binance.US canceled trading services for several crypto tokens on June 7. The move comes after the SEC filed a lawsuit against the Binance entity and its leadership earlier this week.
"After careful consideration, Binance.US will remove selected premium trading pairs on June 8, 2023 at 9:00 AM PDT / 12:00 PM PDT. ET. We have also decided to simplify our buy, Sell and switch products, and suspend our OTC trading portal," the announcement read.
Suspension affects more than 90 trading pairs of stablecoin Tether, eight bitcoins pair and two Binance USD pairs. According to Binance.US, deposits and withdrawals are still available. A spokesperson for Tether said the decision could be a pre-emptive move against non- USDT tokens listed on the exchange, which could be considered securities by the SEC.
Binance.US has also reduced the number of trading pairs that support the switch. Currently, buy, sell and convert options are only available for USDT, USD Coin, Binance Coin, Ether, BTC, Fetch.ai (FET), Cosmos, Aptos , Polygon, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Phantom
, ApeCoin, Solana, Chain link, Cardano, Polka dot, Gala and Avalanche.
US dollar conversions will continue to be available, the exchange said. However, the maximum transaction amount for buy, sell and convert options has been updated to $10,000. Additionally, Binance.US shut down its over-the-counter (OTC) trading platform , but did not say when operations would resume. On June 5, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Binance for allegedly issuing unregistered securities. US regulators brought 13 charges against the exchange, including unregistered offers and sales of BNB and BUSD tokens, Simple Earn and BNB Vault products, and its staking program.
Additionally, Binance failed to register its Binance.com platform as an exchange or broker-dealer clearinghouse, the SEC said in the lawsuit. Just a day after filing the Binance lawsuit, the commission is also pursuing Coinbase on similar grounds, alleging that the exch ange offers popular cryptocurrencies such as SOL, MATIC and The Sandbox
, qualify as securities.
