Messages Revealed: Gary Gensler Was Offered to Consult at Binance Before He Became SEC Chairman!

Binance in 2017 cryptocurrency It exploded in the world and became the largest digital currency exchange in the world. However, he soon ran into a problem.

Despite operating largely from hubs in China and then Japan, a fifth of its clients were in the US, where authorities signaled a crackdown on unregulated offshore crypto companies was imminent.

A Binance executive warned colleagues in a private chat in 2019 that any lawsuit from US regulators would be like “nuclear fallout” for Binance’s business and officials.

Wall Street Journal Claims It Received Messages Between Binance Employees

Concerned about the threat of prosecution, Binance has devised a plan to oust the US authorities, according to messages and documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal from 2018 to 2020, as well as interviews with former employees.

The strategy focused on building a simple American platform called Binance.US, which would license Binance’s technology and brand, but otherwise appear completely independent of Binance.com. This platform would protect the larger Binance.com exchange from US regulators scrutiny, which would exclude US users.

But according to interviews, messages, and documents reviewed by the WSJ, Binance and Binance.US are much more intertwined than the companies disclosed, mixing staff and finances, and sharing an affiliate that buys and sells cryptocurrencies.

Binance developers in China retained the software code that supports Binance.US users’ digital wallets, potentially giving Binance access to US customer data.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice have been investigating the headquartered Binance’s relationship with Binance.US since at least 2020, according to subpoenas and people familiar with the matter.

Binance CEO and Current SEC Chairman Gary Gensler Meet in 2019

In 2018 and 2019, Binance staff turned to Gary Gensler, then former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and now head of the SEC, to be an advisor.

Gensler, who was teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the time, said a Binance employee in a conversation with his colleagues “if the Democrats win the 2020 elections, he will likely be in a position to be a reformer.”

According to the conversation, Ella Zhang and Harry Zhou, who were head of Binance’s venture investment arm at the time, met with Gensler in October 2018. Zhou wrote: “I observed that Gensler was generous in sharing his licensing strategies despite his refusal to counsel.”

A person close to him said that while he was teaching at MIT from 2018 to 2021, Gensler was offered to be a consultant by several private firms, including Binance, but he declined.

The person in question said Gensler met with the founder of Binance in Tokyo in March 2019 and interviewed him via video for a crypto course at MIT the following summer. Gensler became SEC chairman in April 2021.

*Not investment advice.