- Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) made a surprise lawsuit against Binance.
- The lawsuit has labelled Bitcoin, Ether, Binance USD, Tether and Litecoin as commodities.
- CFTC also made allegations of market manipulation and a lack of compliance efforts.
Binance CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao has rejected the allegations made by Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) against Binance and himself in the March 27 lawsuit.
On March 27, the US CFTC issued a 74-page complaint labelling Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Binance USD (BUSD), Litecoin (LTC), and Tether (USDT) as commodities and also accused Binance and Changpeng Zhao of market manipulation and lack of compliance.
CFTC has also accused Binance of not cooperating with the investigative subpoenas while also obscuring the location of its executive offices.
CZ calls CFTC’s claims incomplete recitation of facts
Binance’s CEO published a blog post arguing that the cryptocurrency exchange:
“Binance.com does not trade for profit or “manipulate” the market under any circumstances. Binance “trades” in a number of situations. Our revenues are in crypto. We do need to convert them from time-to-time to cover expenses in fiat or other crypto currencies. We have affiliates that provide liquidity for less liquid pairs. These affiliates are monitored specifically not to have large profits.”
In the lawsuit, the CFTC has accused Binance of trading on its own platform using 300 “house accounts” without properly disclosing the information to its customers in its Terms of Use. The CFTC says that the exchange has instead kept the information as a “top secret” and even refused to respond to the commission-issued investigative subpoenas looking for information about the said trading activity.
CZ also went ahead to disclose that he has two accounts with Binance: one for the card and one for crypto holding. He says in the blog post:
“Personally, I have two accounts at Binance: one for Binance Card, one for my crypto holdings. I eat our own dog food and store my crypto on Binance.com. I also need to convert crypto from time-to-time to pay for my personal expenses or for the Card.”
