We wrote last week about the SEC’s recent insider trading lawsuit in which it identified nine tokens as “securities.” We made the following observation: “The potential implications of the SEC’s identifying these nine assets as securities are obvious. Securities exchanges must be registered with the SEC. There are undoubtedly numerous cryptocurrency platforms that sell the nine tokens and which are not so registered. Will the SEC next train its sights on those platforms?”
It looks like the first domino has now fallen in response to the SEC’s action. In a blog post on August 1, 2022, Binance.US said that it would delist the AMP token, which was the only one of the nine tokens the SEC identified that was listed on the Biance.US platform. It gave the following explanation:
We operate in a rapidly evolving industry and our listing and delisting processes are designed to be responsive to market and regulatory developments. Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed securities fraud charges against a former employee of Coinbase, among others. In its suit, the SEC named nine digital assets that it alleges are securities. Of those nine tokens, only Amp (AMP) is listed on the Binance.US platform.
Out of an abundance of caution, we have decided to delist the AMP token from Binance.US, effective August 15, 2022. While trading of AMP may resume at some point in the future on the Binance.US platform, we are taking this step now until more clarity exists around the classification of AMP.
