Binance saw $850M withdrawal prior to CFTC indictment: Data

Right before the exchange platform Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao have been accused of regulatory violations by the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), almost a billion dollars in crypto reportedly left the platform’s wallets. 

According to the Thanefield Capital data research, a few hours before the Binance CFTC indictment, which occurred at 3 pm UTC on Monday, March 27, an unusually large amount was withdrawn across centralized exchanges. In 12 hours preceding the indictment, almost $1.5 billion left such platforms as Binance, Kraken, Coinbase and Bitfinex. More than half of it, or $850 million, was withdrawn from Binance.

Just one hour after the announcement, Binance saw an additional $240 million withdrawn. According to the data from Nansen, in the past 24 hours, more than $400 million were withdrawn only in Ethereum-based funds.

However, Binance still holds $63.36 billion worth of cryptocurrency assets: this includes over $2 billion worth of USDT, $17 billion worth of Bitcoin, and $8.1 billion worth of Ether.

CFRC filed a suit against Binance and CZ in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. According to the Commission, that’s been investigating Binance’s business since 2021, the company failed to meet its regulatory obligations by not properly registering with the derivatives regulator. Binance allegedly conducted transactions in Bitcoin, Ether and Litecoin for U.S. citizens since at least 2019.

Related: 7 details in the CFTC lawsuit against Binance you may have missed

The largest crypto exchange in the world has also been under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and federal prosecutors, who have examined its adherence to Anti-Money Laundering rules. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) conducts its own inquiry on whether Binance allowed U.S. traders to access unregistered securities.

Changpeng Zhao has already rejected allegations from the CFTC, arguing that the crypto exchange “does not trade for profit or ‘manipulate’ the market under any circumstances.”

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