US federal judge rejects SEC’s request to freeze Binance.US assets

The federal court hearing the case of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Binance rejected the regulator’s request for a temporary freeze of the assets of Binance.US, the American branch of the crypto exchange.

This allows Binance.US to continue to operate. According to Judge Amy Berman Jackson, there is no need to freeze the company’s assets, as the exchange and the regulator can mutually agree on limits independently. However, she ordered Binance.US to provide the court with a list of its business expenses and instructed the parties to continue negotiating.

Furthermore, the judge pointed out that the SEC lacks concrete evidence that Binance.US moved client funds out of the country. However, SEC lawyers argue that the company has enough private key segments to enable this action. The SEC had demanded a freeze on the assets until it was proven that none of the Binance employees, including CEO Changpeng Zhao, had access to the private keys.

Meanwhile, Judge Jackson was unable to obtain a clear answer from the SEC’s lawyers on how they differentiate between crypto assets classified as securities and those deemed ordinary. The lawyers were also unable to define precisely what constitutes a “crypto asset.”

At the beginning of last week, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Binance, alleging that the exchange had breached securities trading regulations. The representatives of the exchange declared that they would defend the platform and join hands with other participants in the US crypto market to fight the SEC to the fullest extent of the law.

Later, the US regulator lodged a lawsuit with similar allegations against Coinbase, contending that the firm unlawfully facilitated the buying and selling of crypto assets, resulting in billions of dollars in profits.