Traders have withdrawn a total of $125 million in digital assets from crypto exchange Binance in the past hour, according to blockchain intelligence platform Nansen. This comes after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued the company and its CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao for violating federal securities law on Monday. The SEC alleged that Binance had breached multiple federal securities laws, including offering unregistered crypto securities and allowing for commingling of customer funds.
The outflows came as the SEC lawsuit alleged that Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, had breached multiple federal securities laws, said Nansen. The suit said that Binance offered unregistered crypto securities including BNB and BUSD tokens to the general public and allowed for commingling of customer funds.
The SEC also alleged that CZ, the company’s chief executive officer, was secretly in control of Binance.US, an ostensibly separate entity operating in the U.S., and a CZ-owned entity had inflated Binance.US’s trading volume.