According to Binance’s announcement, Binance has reached settlements with the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Office of Foreign Assets Control, and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, including historic registration, compliance, and sanctions issues.
Binance said that it is committed to protecting users and has invested heavily in security and compliance. In the past two years, Binance has reorganized its organization and personnel, upgraded its systems, and introduced new leadership with extensive compliance experience. Importantly, Binance has always adhered to its core value of user security. The company takes its responsibilities as a custodian seriously and provides 1:1 support for each user's assets. The settlement with the US agency did not accuse Binance of misappropriating any user funds or engaging in market manipulation. To position itself for the next 50 years, Binance will continue to work in four major areas: including compliance, security, cooperation with law enforcement, and user transparency.
Leadership change: Richard Teng, former head of global regional markets at Binance, immediately succeeds CZ as CEO. With over 30 years of financial services and regulatory experience, Richard Teng will lead the company into its next phase of growth.
Compliance and Security: Binance has been systematically restructuring its organization and personnel, upgrading its systems, and establishing new industry compliance standards. For example, the company has updated and expanded its internal anti-money laundering (AML) detection and analysis capabilities. In addition, Binance is one of the first major exchanges outside the United States to require mandatory KYC procedures for all users. In recent years, Binance has invested significant resources to strengthen its compliance program. There are currently more than 60 people with experience in law enforcement or regulatory agencies, and more than 200 people with compliance professional certificates, including anti-money laundering experts. It is worth mentioning that Binance has also invested a lot of resources and efforts to comply with sanctions regulations. Today, in addition to KYC and IP blocking, Binance also uses advanced third-party tools to voluntarily implement controls and restrictions related to sanctions laws in countries such as the United States, including real-time on-chain sanctions transaction monitoring and screening.
Law Enforcement Cooperation: From January 1 to November 13, 2023, Binance processed more than 52,700 law enforcement requests through its Government Law Enforcement Request System, serving 12,699 registered law enforcement officers worldwide. In addition, Binance proactively shares knowledge with law enforcement. In 2022, Binance hosted and participated in more than 70 workshops to train law enforcement officers around the world in combating cyber and financial crime.
Transparency Commitment: Binance continuously protects users' assets, and users can withdraw 100% of their assets from the platform at any time. As part of its transparency commitment, Binance shares its hot and cold wallet addresses, as well as published Merkle tree reserve proofs and B token collateral proofs. In addition, Binance has established user safety measures such as the Margin Insurance Fund to protect users from losses when the cross/isolated margin equity is less than zero or when users are unable to repay their debts. Binance is one of the first cryptocurrency exchanges to have a safety fund (SAFU) to protect users in extreme cases.