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So the SEC is suing Binance, and let me tell you: I love a dang legal document. Please join me on this stupid journey as I live blog my favorite direct quotes from the complaint.
The best thing about any legal case, from my perspective, is the hot goss. I grew up in a small town where gossip was a contact sport, and I have discovered that government lawyers get much better, juicier gossip than I do because they have more extensive discovery methods. Crypto communicates in group chats, which means they’ve probably written some very stupid things at Binance. In fact, I know that already because there were some very stupid things in the CFTC complaint about Binance.
Now to be clear, I don’t think Binance is the only entity ever to decide that skirting US law to acquire more customers — after all, US pharma companies have been making billion-dollar settlements over that exact same “biz decision.” But I do think explicitly writing that you are deliberately doing that is a real clown move. A government body can’t hold you accountable for conversations they can’t hear; they can, however, throw anything you put in writing back in your face. And mens rea matters — you can’t call something an oopsily doopsily mistakey-wakey if you’re also saying in a written record that it’s a business decision.
Can the SEC pull out hilarious new things we did not see from the CFTC? Let’s find out.
