Binance’s arm in the United States suspended its OTC trading platform and reduced the number of supported convert trading pairs.
Binance.US removed trading services for several crypto tokens on June 7.
The move follows a lawsuit filed earlier this week by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission against Binance entities and thei leadership.
“After careful consideration, Binance.US will remove selected Advanced Trading pairs on
June 8, 2023 at 9 a.m. PDT / 12 p.m. EDT. We have also decided to streamline our Buy, Sell & Convert offering and have paused our OTC Trading Portal,” reads an announcement.
The pause affects over 90 trading pairs of the stablecoin Tether
USDT
tickers down
$1.00
, eight Bitcoin
BTC
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$51,541
pairs and two Binance USD (BUSD) pairs. According to Binance.US, deposits and withdrawals remain available.
In a statement sent to Cointelegraph, a spokesperson for Tether suggested the decision could be a preemptive move for non-USDT tokens listed on the exchange that could be considered securities by the SEC.
Binance.US also reduced the number of supported convert trading pairs. Currently, buy, sell and convert options remain available for only USDT, USD Coin
USDC
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$1.00
, BNB
BNB
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$331
, Ether
ETH
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$2,747
, BTC, Fetch.ai (FET), Cosmos
ATOM
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$10.38
, Aptos
APT
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$9.44
, Polygon
MATIC
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$0.8880
, Litecoin
LTC
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$70.65
, Dogecoin
DOGE
tickers down
$0.08
, Shiba Inu
SHIB
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$0.000010
, Fantom
FTM
tickers down
$0.42
, ApeCoin
APE
tickers down
$1.57
, Solana
SOL
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$116
, Chainlink
LINK
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$20.42
, Cardano
ADA
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$0.571
, Polkadot
DOT
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$7.70
, Gala
GALA
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$0.03
and Avalanche
AVAX
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$41.83
.
Conversion for USD will remain available, said the exchange. However, the maximum trade amount for buy, sell and convert options has been updated to $10,000.
Additionally, Binance.US shut down its over-the-counter (OTC) trading platform without informing when it will resume operations.
On June 5, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Binance for allegedly offering unregistered securities.
The U.S. regulator pressed 13 charges against the exchange, including unregistered offers and sales of
the BNB and BUSD tokens, the Simple Earn and BNB Vault products, and its staking program.
In addition, the SEC alleges in the suit that Binance failed to register its Binance.com platform as an
exchange or a broker-dealer clearing agency. Only a day after filing the Binance suit,
the commission also went after Coinbase on similar grounds, alleging that popular cryptocurrencies offered by the exchange, such as SOL, MATIC and The Sandbox
SAND
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$0.48
, qualify as securities.