A story sharing exclusive info about Binance’s operations and its participation with authorities was published in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, March 5, 2019.
According to a report from WSJ, cryptocurrency exchange firm Binance expressed interest in employing Gary Gensler as a consultant several years before he was appointed chairman of the SEC in the United States.
According to the magazine (1), over the period between 2018 and 2019, Binance was making concerted efforts to recruit Gary Gensler as a member of their team.
It was back in the time when the current head of the SEC was still serving in his previous role as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Ella Zhang, a former head of Binance’s venture arm, and Harry Zhou, a current Binance executive, were responsible for these efforts, and they arranged a meeting with Gensler in 2018.
According to WSJ, Zhou was employed by a startup that Binance was funding during the period in question.
The Wall Street Journal has indicated in its story that it has obtained access to specific chats, texts, and documentation. According to a story in Journal, Zhou stated in a chat message back then, “I notice that while Gensler denied advisor-ship, he was helpful in discussing license techniques.”
Binance, on the other hand, has a history of collaborating with a variety of former American leaders. In the past, Binance has recruited former members of the United States Congress, such as Montana’s former ex-Senator Max Baucus, to serve as consultants.
About Gary Gensler, a Binance staffer indicated that they were positive about Gensler returning to the seat even if Demas were to win the election in 2020.
According to the reports, Gary Gensler and Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, met again in March 2019.
While Gensler was still a student at MIT, according to the journal, he was approached by several different private enterprises. Gensler, on the other hand, turned down every offer.
Binance.com and Binance.US Have a Connection With One Another
In addition to this, the WSJ story emphasizes the connection between Binance and Binance.US, the company’s subsidiary in the United States.
According to the article, the heads of the exchange made precautions to limit risks and hide Binance from regulatory inspection because of fear that they would come under regulatory scrutiny.
During that period, 2018-2019, most of Binance’s hub operations were based in China and Japan. The United States accounted for one-fifth of the company’s total consumer base.
At that time, US officials had already given notice that they intended to initiate a crackdown on unregulated cryptocurrency players located abroad.
In 2019, one of the executives at Binance expressed concern to their coworkers in a private conversation about the possibility of a “nuclear fallout” for Binance’s executives and the company’s companies.
According to the texts and papers obtained by WSJ, Binance hatched a plot to thwart US authorities to avoid being prosecuted for its actions.
The WSJ observed that although Binance & Binance.US portray themselves as independent businesses, they are extremely interconnected.
For example, they share staff members and funds, share an affiliated entity that purchased and sold cryptocurrencies, and share many other aspects of their business.
So, if the US regulators can discover a connection between the two organizations, they can exercise greater police power over Binance’s entire operation.
Binance was recently unable to obtain a license in the state of Texas because state officials did not receive the needed financial information from chairman Changpeng Zhao.