Binance Pushes to Dismiss SEC Lawsuit With Flurry of Filings
Binance may have settled with U.S. regulators to the tune of $4.3 billion, but it still faces an ongoing lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In a series of court filings Tuesday, Binance pushed for the suit to be dismissed, claiming that the SEC has applied a “novel, contorted interpretation” of securities laws, and accusing the regulator of “territorial aggrandizement.” In the first of its filings, Binance and its founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao argued that the regulator had built “virtually its entire case on the argument that an ‘investment contract’ need not include either an investment or a contract.” The SECs complaint, the exchange said, “focuses on transactions by customers who clicked on a website, bought tokens from other anonymous token owners, and then logged off.” Binance claimed that no contract existed with a promoter to “invest money into a common business enterprise,” and added that the regulator had ignored that the existence of an “investment contract” should be determined on a transaction-by-transaction basis. In its second filing, lawyers for BAM Trading Services, Binance‘s American subsidiary, accused the SEC of overreach, arguing that it claims to have regulatory jurisdiction over “virtual commodities” despite the fact that Congress hasn’t voted to give it that
