Binance Coin (BNB) Loses 8% As SEC Takes Exchange To Court

The cryptocurrency market sank on Monday after news that the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that Binance, the world’s biggest digital-assets exchange sought to “evade the critical regulatory oversight designed to protect investors and markets” while enriching itself “by billions of dollars.”

Binance coin (BNB), the token used by exchange customers to obtain discounts on trades and other financial benefits fell by more than 8%, according to Bitstamp, tumbling to $275 late in the day from $300 shortly after 11 a.m. New York time, when news of the suit began to circulate. The value of the entire cryptocurrency market dropped to $1.08 trillion from $1.13 trillion, CoinMarketCap data show.

A key issue in the Binance suit was that the exchange sold cryptocurrencies that the SEC considers to be securities without registration. Although it remains unclear whether any tokens are securities, the SEC has claimed that most of them are and has specifically identified some in other legal actions. Among the latter group, prices fell 6.6%-13% on Monday.

Those assets include blockchain tokens such as Solana (SOL), Algorand (ALGO), Cardano (ADA), Filecoin (FIL) and Polygon (MATIC). Other notable tokens declining in that range include the metaverse-focused virtual world Decentraland (MANA) and NFT ecosystem Sandbox (SAND).

Market leader Bitcoin was down 5.7% late in the day, tumbling all the way to $25,550, the lowest since mid-March.

Ether, the No. 2 crypto, fared better, slipping 3.5%. It was not listed in the suit as a security in the suit, and there is some evidence it may be considered a commodity, as is bitcoin. SEC Chair Gary Gensler declined to provide an opinion to this question in a testy back-and-forth debate with House Financial Services Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) at an appearance on Capitol Hill in April.

In the stock market, Coinbase fell 8.2%. The only publicly traded crypto exchange in the U.S. has been put on notice by the SEC that it will also face enforcement action.