Binance Lawyers Urge Court to Dismiss SEC's Updated Lawsuit
Date: 2024-11-06 Author: Gabriel Deangelo Categories: BUSINESS
In the filing, the lawyers note that while the SEC acknowledges that cryptocurrencies themselves are not "securities," it still refuses to logically follow that conclusion. Recall that on June 29, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the District Court for the District of Columbia partially dismissed the SEC's claims against Binance, leaving the bulk of the charges in place, but granted Binance's request to dismiss a number of charges. In particular, the regulator's claims regarding secondary sales of the BNB token, the issuance of the BUSD stablecoin, and the Simple Earn program were dismissed.
However, the court will continue to consider allegations related to the BNB initial coin offering (ICO) and subsequent sales, the BNB Vault program, lack of registration, and inadequate anti-fraud compliance. The staking services provided by Binance.US will also remain under scrutiny.
The SEC has amended its lawsuit, presenting new arguments. In the revised document, the regulator claims that almost all transactions with crypto assets on the platform, including secondary sales of tokens, can be regarded as securities transactions. This is justified by the assumption that some investors expect the value of tokens to increase in the future.
Binance's lawyers, in turn, pointed to the lack of a "clear legal basis" that would allow crypto assets to be classified as investment contracts, as well as the uncertainty of the standards for their classification. "The SEC continues to arbitrarily decide who wins and who loses, recently abruptly abandoning the assertion that transactions with ETH, the second most popular cryptocurrency after BTC, are investment contracts," the statement said.
The lawsuit against Binance and its then-CEO Changpeng Zhao was filed by the SEC on June 5, 2023, and included 13 charges, including selling unregistered securities. In addition to Binance, major cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase and Kraken have also come under regulatory pressure.
