Binance.US, the US arm of the world’s largest crypto company and exchange, Binance, has suspended USD deposits for its US customers, with withdrawal suspension to follow soon.
On Friday, June 9th, the Twitter handle of Binance US shared a notification sent to its customers stating that the exchange’s payment and banking partners had signaled their intentions to pause USD fiat channels as the SEC is not even sparing its business partners in its “ideological campaign against the American digital asset industry.”
The exchange said:
“As a result, in an effort to protect our customers and platform, today we are suspending USD deposits and notifying customers that our banking partners are preparing to pause fiat (USD) withdrawal channels as early as June 13, 2023. We encourage customers to take appropriate action with their USD.”
According to the notification, Binance US has already halted the USD deposits and encouraged the users to withdraw their fiat deposits via ACH bank transfer by June 13th. The company warned that ACH withdrawals might take several days to process due to high volumes and weekend bank closures. The exchange will maintain 1:1 reserves for all customers’ assets.
Crypto Services to Remain Fully Operational
As per the notification, beginning the next week, the exchange will also delist all USD trading pairs, while support for stablecoin pairs will continue. Any remaining USD balance on the exchange after June 15th will be converted to stablecoins that can be withdrawn on-chain.
However, all cryptocurrency services will remain operational as usual, including trading, staking, and crypto deposits and withdrawals. Binance US said it would remain a crypto-only exchange until it secured other banking partners.
While the SEC alleged that Binance redirected assets to funds owned by CZ as FTX did, the crypto community appreciated this Binance US’ transparency move and said that Binance is far different from FTX.
As reported, the US SEC sued Binance and its CEO CZ on June 5th for violating security laws. The company reiterated that it would vigorously defend itself, its customers, and the crypto industry against “the meritless attacks of the SEC.”
CZ Internal Letter Asks Employees to be Careful with Chat
On Thursday, June 8th, CZ sent an internal letter to talk about the employee chat records disclosed by the SEC.
He shared with employees a tweet containing the chat log of two former Binance executives who looked unhappy with their job at Binance and talked about compliance circumvention at the company.
Although the chat log is about two guys ranting privately five years ago, CZ said it is extremely damaging to the reputation and will be used in the courtroom. In the letter, he wrote:
“In tough times, let’s keep our heads down and keep building products people use. While we may still see other chat logs of disgruntled employees ranting, or other things we (or I) were not careful with saying in the past, they will also find that we continue to hold ourselves to a high ethical standard and, most importantly, we have always gone above and beyond to protect our users.”
