In a new legal development, Binance and its former CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), have filed a motion to dismiss the amended lawsuit filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and strike out some parts of the claims made by the agency.
Binance said in its amended complaint that the SEC rejects the reasoning of the court’s recent ruling that cryptocurrencies are not securities in themselves and that their resale in the secondary market is not a securities transaction, even though it continues to treat most cryptocurrency transactions as securities due to some buyers’ expectations that the value of these digital assets will increase.
The SEC stated in its amendment to the lawsuit that it removed the term cryptocurrency securities, expressing regret for any previous confusion.
Binance is asking the court to quash the SEC’s demands to relinquish control over it and its former CEO “CZ.”
The move comes after Judge Amy Berman Jackson dismissed some of the initial lawsuit’s charges in June 2024, including those related to the Simple Earn product and BNB sales.
But the SEC responded by amending its lawsuit to address the court’s concerns and support other charges that the judge did not dismiss, including the sale of ten cryptocurrencies that the SEC alleged were unregistered securities.
It is noteworthy that the Securities and Exchange Commission had filed the lawsuit against “CZ” and three subsidiaries of Binance in June 2023, in an attempt to apply financial regulations to cryptocurrency transactions that the Commission considers to be unregistered securities.
