Binance under CFTC investigation over trading activities: report | Hacker News Reader

Binance under CFTC investigation over trading activities: report

theblockcrypto.com

84 pointsedf1361 comments

I guess it's maybe not the case but it does feel like the US are doing everything to support trading only on the local and more limited Coinbase.

Binance has already went as far as to forbid US customers from using them, make a much worse but compliant US-only exchange, go as far as they can in finding VPN users and others who subvert the rules, hired a US senator to help them, and the US is still making more moves against them.

The situation in the US is already really tedious if you want to invest in many big (top 10, even top 5 projects) and to trade in general in some states. It's disappointing to see.

I mean, don't you think it's reasonable for a government to want to ensure that their citizens aren't being ripped off or able to participate in illegal activities?

Is the implication that (almost?) every other western country wants their citizens to be ripped off because they allow Binance? I don't think it's quite as simple as that..

I think the more likely implication is that the US casts a wide shadow over international financial regulations, and that other countries that seek to do business with or in the US will aim to regulate in lockstep with the US.

To that extent, waiting until the US fixes a source of fraud is strategically reasonable.

Surely that's only in the best interest of the people, just like in all the areas a major government has a vested interest in exerting a large amount of control upon. Surely.

EDIT: wording

Another spin on this situation would be "US is going after any exchange which doesn't comply with US regs/guidance and currently Coinbase is the only exchange willing/able to do so"

Maybe the US needs to change it's regulations. It's handling of cryptocurrency is hostile to legitimate use of the technology. The current tax situation being the worst of it in my opinion

"The news comes just a day after Binance announced it has hired Max Baucus, who served decades in the U.S. Senate"

The old game never changes

With US "long-arm jurisdiction" comes US long-arm corruption where companies with no business in the US are forced to pay US lobbyists and US has-been politicians ...

s/forced/coerced/

It's not like binance is exactly squeaky clean here. Long-arm jurisdiction means it impacts US citizens who are required to pay taxes regardless of residence.

Couldn't Binance just reject doing business with US citizens and not worry?

That's exactly what it's doing (for .com), including monitoring for vpns and other ways that users try to circumvent. My guess is they'll be fine as I dont see what more they could've been doing and I really doubt they were allowing people they could tell are US citizens to use Binance.com given all the comments from Americans over the last months.

>US citizens who are required to pay taxes regardless of residence.

US citizens and also Eritreans (there was Libya at some point in time), so really, nothing to write home about.

Which is worse. This guy is going work for a known shady organisation to help them manage regulations and set them up so that their shady dealings end up within the law, or they get a minor slap on the wrist, and they're allowed to continue doing business.

Binance is squeaky clean here, they do reject doing business with US citizens (except for their US entity which is fully compliant with US regulations and is not the target of this investigation).

This restriction was not in place from the start, what happens to US citizens who have funds in binance_dot_com before this restriction? It's hardly clean in any sense.

AFAIK, binance.com still allows logins from the US (if you have an old account from a few years back), you just can't trade in it (supposedly). However, you can transfer funds out of the account.

I had some coins stashed away on my binance.com wallets which I ended up transferring to binance.us and they sent me an email telling me that my binance.com account will be disabled after a 2 week grace period because I'm accessing it from the US. It's been more than a month now and I can still log into it. It seems that Binance took a more lax approach to this than other exchanges in the past which is biting them now.

It's not the case for me, I can login but my funds are a lost cause I'd suggest you transfer them out while you still can. On a hindsight I have no idea why I'd used it, it shady as hell I hope US sue them to oblivion but I doubt it would happen in a meaningful way. (rant)

> but my funds are a lost cause

Can you explain what you mean? Do they not even appear in your account when you log in? Or are you for some reason prevented from transferring them?

It says I'm from US, they're not serving US customers, and I must identify myself as a non-US person, or I won't be able to transfer any funds at all. See this popup notice upon login:

``` Service notice Dear user, as we perform periodic sweeps of our existing controls, we recognize that you are trying to access Binance from a US IP address. Please note that as per our Terms of Use, we are unable to service US persons. If you are a US resident or citizen, please register for an account at our partner platform, Binance.US, where you can experience the same industry-leading trading technology as available on Binance. If you are not a US person, please complete Identity Verification to prevent any restrictions to your account. We thank you for your continued support and apologise for any inconvenience caused. ```

IMO this is just a terrible and shameless excuse to take customers money away, I'm surprised nobody have taken action towards them.

I was able to withdraw my money within the 90 day grace period, even after seeing the pop up. Have you checked if you're still within the 90 days from their email notice, and is your account fully locked at the moment (i.e. you can still go to your wallet and press withdraw)?

You should have got an "Account review notice" and an "Important Service Update" email from them that says you have 90 days to transfer your funds out. After that your account would be locked.

I got my funds back within that period.

Now of course, it's questionable whether it's right to just lock up peoples' money after a self imposed time limit without their consent - even though it's for regulatory reasons. But that's not the same as them arbitrarily locking up your money.

> It's been more than a month now and I can still log into it

I'm glad I can still login. I needed the info in there to complete my 2020 taxes. I exported all my data from 2021 too incase I can't login next year. I would advise doing the same.

Maybe triggered by the sheer quantity of tax returns filed this year listing Binance as the platform used to trade cryptocurrency.

Binance has binance.us for Americans but the selection is much worse and it is trivial to continue using regular binance with a VPN.

I don't think you'd normally report the exchange used to trade on your tax return, just the transactions themselves.

They can definitely make assumptions, though, when you report you sold XYZ coin that's not traded on any US-regulated exchanges.

For cryptocurrencies there is a field where you fill out the institution on which you executed the trade.

Never seen that. What form has it?

Ah, turbotax exposed the field but looking at the generated form 8949 I see the info wasn't passed on to the return.

I never truly understood that - prohibiting companies outside of US from getting American customers. If the US govt doesn't want that to occur maybe they should police their citizens instead and see how that goes? I mean, an American citizen signs up for a service that he's forbidden from using and somehow that's the company's (that's offering that service) fault? Looks to me like trying to pass off doing your bidding to others.

> an American citizen signs up for a service that he's forbidden from using and somehow that's the company's (that's offering that service) fault?

Americans aren’t forbidden from using Binance by the U.S. The U.S. says if you’re doing business with Americans, you have to follow these rules. Binance isn’t following those rules.

One solution is to follow those rules. Another is to not do business with Americans. Either way, the obligation is on the vender. Not the consumer. (If the consumer lies about being American, the vender may be able to collect damages.)

> Binance isn’t following those rules.

Allegedly ;)

> Either way, the obligation is on the vender.

Yes, but that's an obligation that's put forward by the US govt. If I'm incorporated in another country why do I have to concern myself with their market regulations?

> why do I have to concern myself with their market regulations?

Because the people you are doing business with, Binance, decided to use U.S. dollars. And, allegedly, to do business with Americans.

We seem to be going in circles ;) I'm ok to let this go ;)

US investment regulators are determined to see investors as victims and other parties (crypto exchanges in this case) as perpetrators even if that's not quite what's happening. You can profit from something you know is a ponzi or pump-and-dump and you're still the victim. (The only exception I know of is the Madoff clawbacks.)

It's trivial as a US resident to use binance.com using a VPN. There is no KYC requirement and they do nothing to block VPN IPs.

And a fake ID scan costs about as much as a VPN subscription... If we're going by what's "trivial", no amount of KYC will ever suffice.

This is unsurprising. They'll pay a fine.

that should not be hard. they can pay from one of the presumably thousands of accounts frozen and money/crypto stolen

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/lye4n5/bina...

Crypto subs on reddit are not exactly famous for being trustworthy sources

For what? They've went above and beyond to prevent US citizens to trade with their main exchange and to only leave a gimped version in the US.

maybe binance should be investigated for theft

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/lye4n5/bina...

these agencies always focus on the wrongs things to investigate

What they are under investigation for now is much bigger than some random person loosing $100K which is a small sum when you consider the size of the whole market.

And even so, nothing is stopping any agency from having multiple investigations running at the same time, one does not exclude the other and all that.

To begin an investigation (by the USA) they need first to establish that Binance has been operating in the US (aka US customers).

> they need first to establish that Binance has been operating in the US (aka US customers).

Tether allegedly owns billions of U.S. dollars in a Bahamas account. Tether is a Binance affiliate. They are subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

As per US charges against FIFA officials, the US claims extraterritorial jurisdiction over any matter involving US dollar transactions.

First of all it is a clear case for law enforcement to get involved, I am not on Binance side on this one. However, I would strongly discourage anybody to start investing in crypto with a 100K ticket. It is much better to try it with 100USD and see how it works and start to put in a fix amount every month.

No theft took place there. The user made an unbelievably poor decision to wire 100k out of a business account into a personal account where the names don't match up. Furthermore the person communicating with Binance is not the legal owner of the account but instead the grandchild of the legal owner.

Third, the legal owner of the account is apparently afraid of using online banking, but not afraid of cryptocurrency and this is used as a justification for not just using the simple ACH method that could have resolved this whole thing in a matter of days.

If you're Binance, everything about this looks like money laundering and Binance is absolutely in the right to have acted this way. If anything, I wouldn't be surprised if Binance reported this to the authorities.

To me it sounds so weird, that it is quite difficult to believe that it is not money laundering. Sounds exactly like someone somehow gained access to some old, retired persons old business account and decided to cash it out via crypto.

I agree completely. Particularly the part of the story where they refused to use ACH. Supposedly this person has run a business before but did not employ a lawyer or even visit one at any stage?

Considering that support asked about him logging on from different locations, I'd guess he logged on to US binance from a foreign VPN at one point. That, in combination with a wire from a business account to a private binance account. Definitely flags on that account.

Based on such flags, they might assume the source account is a stolen account, and I suppose they have to make sure the money goes back to the legitimate owner, not just back to the assumed-to-be-compromised account.

> The news comes just a day after Binance announced it has hired Max Baucus, who served decades in the U.S. Senate and later as an ambassador to China, to help the firm navigate the U.S. regulatory landscape. Binance said Thursday that Baucus will provide the exchange with policy guidance and act as a liaison between Binance and regulators.

Crony capitalism is alive and well in the US...

And the price of BNB falls...

Small relative to how much it went up and relative to volatility

and in line with the whole market, nothing like the XRP / SEC event.

Binance led the migration to USDT as the default reserve currency in the crypto ecosystem.

This could get very spicy.

not bitfinex?

iFinex own Tether, but it was Binance who really led the charge.

I don’t know who the real puppet master is...they’re all in cahoots (i.e. Binance and FTX). The illusion of choice is alive and well.

Binance.us is legal, right? When I tried to sign up for binance.com (not knowing better) it said that I needed to use binance.com instead.

edit:removed unintentional coin shilling.

Please don't shill coins here, even if you don't intend it that way.

Oh I suppose it did come off that way. My bad.

I signed up for Binance.US about two months back. It’s legit but a very low quality offering. Support is just massively overwhelmed and unresponsive. But most exchanges are overwhelmed now so it’s not that unusual.

Same, I signed up when GME/DOGE both started spiking since I have DOGE laying around in a wallet. Getting coins into the exchange was easy enough and I can't comment on trying to withdraw but I can say the verification stuff is stupid-slow. I've provided info for all 3 tiers of verification and my account has sat in "pending" for over a month on the last step (first step was instant, second step took a week or so).

I can always buy BTC on coinbase and transfer them over then convert them to USD/(T) but that's not ideal.

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