• The SEC recently sued Binance and now wants to freeze all of the available assets held by both the U.S. and global exchange.
• A former banking partner has already frozen some of Binance’s assets, which will be released when they close their account on June 14th.
• Binance has argued against the “draconian relief” sought by the SEC, claiming customer funds are safe and a freeze would prevent customers from using their funds as usual.
SEC Sues Binance
The U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently filed a lawsuit against crypto exchange giant Binance for violations of U.S securities laws and “years of violative conduct” that allegedly put customers’ funds at risk.
Freeze Requested
Given this, it was only natural that the SEC requested an emergency asset freeze from the U.S government, targeting both Binance U.S and its global counterpart in order to repatriate funds held abroad. Additionally, a former banking partner had already frozen some of Binance’s assets prior to the court case; these will be released once they close their account on June 14th.
Binance Argues Against Freeze
In response to this request, Binance has argued against its “draconian relief” stating customer funds were perfectly safe and a freeze would do nothing but prevent them from using their funds as usual — while simultaneously hampering operations with legal defense becoming much harder as a result.
Hires Former Agency Director
To fight back against this asset freeze request, however, Binance has reportedly hired former director of enforcement for the SEC Steven Peikin as its lawyer in an effort to leverage his expertise in such matters — having successfully worked on many high-profile cases during his time with the agency between 2017–2020 before leaving it last year in April 2020 due to personal reasons according to reports from financial news outlet Bloomberg Law .
Conclusion
It remains unclear how far this asset freeze request will go or how successful Peikin will be in helping out with this particular case — but one thing is certain: it is going to be an interesting battle between two powerhouses that will definitely have ripple effects throughout the entire cryptocurrency industry moving forward .