According to circulating reports, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has been seeking to reduce his stake in the US division since last year.
It comes amid ever-growing scrutiny from United States federal regulators.
As first reported by The Information yesterday, CZ, who is the Binance.US majority owner, has been aiming to implement the move been since last summer. The business publication website cited two people familiar with the matter.
The report added that the Binance.US leaders have discussed how such an action could help improve the exchange’s position in the eyes of US regulators.
Co-founder CZ, a Canadian citizen, and the Binance crypto exchange have come under harsher scrutiny from US federal regulators in the past year.
On 27 March 2023, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sued CZ and Binance for allegedly breaching derivatives rules and conducting what it said was an ‘illegal’ exchange with ‘sham’ compliance.
The regulator said Binance should have registered with the CFTC a long time ago.
The exchange was accused of evading United States law, ‘while engaging in a calculated strategy of regulatory arbitrage to their commercial benefit’.
Binance controversies
Binance, founded in 2017, is the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world.
In 2021, Binance was investigated by the United States Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service on money laundering and tax offence allegations.
In the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) ordered Binance to halt all regulated activity in June 2021. In the same year, Binance was found to have shared client data with the Russian government.
Its BNB token, is the fourth biggest crypto on the world with a market cap of $47.5bn and a circulating supply of 155,860,327 BNB coins.
At the time of writing on 12 May, the price of BNB is currently trading at $305.01, down 2.12% in the past 24 hours.
So far, CZ has not commented on the reports on his Twitter.
