2023 has proven to be a turbulent year for Binance and its US arm Binance.US, after seeing two of its high-profile executives leave the company as regulatory pressure mounts.
Binance.US CEO Brian Shroder left the crypto exchange this week, along with Head of Legal Krishna Juvvadi and Chief Risk Officer Sidney Majalya.
The US exchange has now cut one-third of its workforce as it cites heightened regulatory scrutiny as a cause for some of the departures.
A Binance.US statement read: “The actions we are taking today provide Binance.US with more than seven years of financial runway and enable us to continue to serve our customers while we operate as a crypto-only exchange.
“The SEC’s aggressive attempts to cripple our industry and the resulting impacts on our business have real world consequences for American jobs and innovation, and this is an unfortunate example of that.”
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Binance.US and Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao, last June over alleged circulation of unregistered securities, the acknowledgment of conflicts of interest amongst the 13 charges.
More recently, the SEC has accused Binance.US of not cooperating with them on the charges placed against them, claiming the exchange’s international custody service, Ceffu, violates the regulator’s deal to halt assets from being moved overseas.
The US regulator also stated that BAM – Binance.US’ holding name – has provided “only 220 documents” with many consisting of “unintelligible screenshots” and documents “without dates or signatures”.
Binance.US’ Ceffu service has become a concern to the SEC, who claim it could use US customer assets to fund other entities under Zhao’s control.
A recent filing from Binance.US stated that concerns over Ceffu were “much ado about nothing”. The filing also states that the request for more information and documents is a “futile fishing expedition”.
