U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's lawsuit against crypto exchange Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao
In a late Friday order, Judge Amy Berman Jackson, of the District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled that the SEC's charges against Binance for the initial coin offering and ongoing sales for BNB, BNB Vault, staking services, failure to register and fraud charges can proceed. She granted Binance and Zhao's motion to dismiss charges tied to secondary BNB sales and Simple Earn.
"The Court notes that several of the district courts presented with SEC enforcement actions involving cryptocurrencies have taken pains to differentiate the alleged investment contracts from the tokens themselves," she wrote."...
Zhao is currently serving a 4-month sentence tied to a sanctions violation charge brought by the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department. The SEC's case against him is separate from this criminal charge. The judge cited Judge Analisa Torres' 2023 ruling in the SEC's case against Ripple Labs in granting Binance's motion to dismiss the secondary BNB sales claim, saying the economic reality of the tokens' transactions mattered to the application of securities law."The Court has not been given grounds to find that the industry, while important, has the broad reach that has motivated courts to apply the doctrine to other industries," the judge wrote Friday.