Binance.US Suspends Trading for Multiple USDT, BTC, BUSD Pairs in Response to SEC Lawsuit

Binance.US Halts Trading for Dozens of USDT, BTC, BUSD Pairs Amid SEC Lawsuit

Binance.US has announced the suspension of trading services for several crypto tokens on June 7, following a lawsuit filed earlier this week by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Binance entities and their leadership.

“After careful consideration, Binance.US will remove selected Advanced Trading pairs on June 8, 2023, at 9 a.m. PDT / 12 p.m. EDT. We have also decided to streamline our Buy, Sell & Convert offering and have paused our OTC Trading Portal,” reads an announcement.

Impacted Trading Pairs

• Over 90 trading pairs of the stablecoin Tether (USDT) with a value of $1.00
• Eight Bitcoin (BTC) tickers with values down to $26,440
• Two Binance USD (BUSD) tickers with values down to $1.00

According to Binance.US, deposits and withdrawals remain available during this period.

In a statement sent to Cointelegraph, a spokesperson for Tether suggested that the decision could be a preemptive move for non-USDT tokens listed on the exchange that could potentially be considered securities by the SEC.

Binance.US has also reduced the number of supported convert trading pairs. Currently, buy, sell, and convert options remain available for the following tokens:

• USDT
• USD Coin (USDC) with a value of $1.00
• BNB with a value of $261
• Ether (ETH) with a value of $1,841
• BTC
• Fetch.ai (FET)
• Cosmos (ATOM) with a value of $9.47
• Aptos (APT) with a value of $7.72
• Polygon (MATIC) with a value of $0.7694
• Litecoin (LTC) with a value of $88.34
• Dogecoin (DOGE) with a value of $0.07
• Shiba Inu (SHIB) with a value of $0.000008
• Fantom (FTM) with a value of $0.29
• ApeCoin (APE) with a value of $2.90
• Solana (SOL) with a value of $19
• Chainlink (LINK) with a value of $5.97
• Cardano (ADA) with a value of $0.328
• Polkadot (DOT) with a value of $5.03
• Gala (GALA) with a value of $0.03
• Avalanche (AVAX) with a value of $13.92

The exchange states that conversion for USD will still be available during this period. However, the maximum trade amount for buy, sell, and convert options has been updated to $10,000. Additionally, Binance.US has temporarily shut down its over-the-counter (OTC) trading platform, without providing information on when it will resume operations.

On June 5, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Binance for allegedly offering unregistered securities. The U.S. regulator has brought forth 13 charges against the exchange, including unregistered offers and sales of the BNB and BUSD tokens, the Simple Earn and BNB Vault products, as well as its staking program.

Furthermore, the SEC alleges in the lawsuit that Binance failed to register its Binance.com platform as an exchange or a broker-dealer clearing agency. Just a day after filing the lawsuit against Binance, the commission also targeted Coinbase on similar grounds, alleging that popular cryptocurrencies offered by the exchange, such as SOL, MATIC, and The Sandbox (SAND), qualify as securities.