SEC Drops Binance Lawsuit: What It Means for Crypto

Okay, so get this: the big boss of finance watchdogs in the U.S., the SEC, just dropped their lawsuit against Binance. Binance is like, the biggest crypto trading spot in the world. This happened on Thursday, and it feels like a whole new vibe for how the government is handling crypto since President Trump got back in charge.

They filed some papers, signed by the lawyers for the SEC, Binance, and even the guy who started Binance, Changpeng Zhao. They did this in a federal court down in Washington, D.C. The SEC basically said they were letting go of the case because they felt like it, and it wasn't a sign of how they feel about other crypto fights. And get this, they can't sue them again on the same stuff.

Binance's spokesperson was super happy about it. They even called it a "landmark moment." They were really thankful to the SEC Chairman, Paul Atkins, and the Trump folks for understanding that new ideas and tech can't really grow if the government is always hitting you with lawsuits. The SEC spokesperson didn't really say anything else.

Just to catch you up, the SEC sued Binance and Zhao back in June 2023. They said Binance was making their trading numbers look bigger than they were, using customer money in weird ways, and not being straight with investors about how they were watching things. They also said Binance let people trade a bunch of crypto coins that the folks at the SEC, during the Biden time, thought should have been registered as investments.

This lawsuit was separate from a whole other thing where Binance said they were guilty and paid a massive $4.32 billion fine last November. That was about breaking rules for stopping money laundering and sanctions. Zhao also admitted he broke anti-money laundering rules and got out of jail last September after being in there for four months.

Oh, and remember back in February? The SEC also dropped another case against Coinbase, which is the biggest U.S. crypto exchange. That one was about them helping people trade like, at least 13 coins that weren't registered.

The crypto world has been kind of annoyed for a while about the government trying to say that digital stuff is like old-school investments. A lot of companies think these coins are more like basic goods, you know? If they are called investments, crypto companies would have to sign up with the SEC and tell investors a whole lot more stuff.

Paul Atkins, the SEC guy, said in May that it's a big deal to figure out clear ways of doing things for trading and keeping crypto safe, while also stopping people who are trying to cheat. He said they are planning to make some new rules for crypto coins. Then, just a bit later, on May 20th, the SEC sued a company called Unicoin. They said Unicoin and some of the people in charge lied and raised over $100 million by saying their coins were safe and backed by things like real estate and parts of companies that weren't public yet.

President Trump said during his run to be president again that he wanted to be a "crypto president" and that he'd undo the crackdown that the previous SEC head, Gary Gensler, was doing. And yeah, since then, the SEC has pulled back or paused a bunch of their crypto lawsuits.