The impact of enforcement action against Binance.US is affecting the prices of cryptocurrencies on its exchange, making more difficult for American investors to offload holdings on the platform without taking a steep hit.
(Bloomberg) — The impact of enforcement action against Binance.US is affecting the prices of cryptocurrencies on its exchange, making more difficult for American investors to offload holdings on the platform without taking a steep hit.
All tokens available to buy or sell directly with dollars on Binance.US were trading at a discount compared to other exchanges, data collated by blockchain analytics firm Kaiko showed on Wednesday. Binance.US presently offers 10 dollar-denominated trading pairs for cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ether and stablecoins USDT and USDC, with the entire group trading at discounts ranging from 2% to 5% in the past week.
The SEC filed charges against Binance.US’s parent company, its owner Changpeng “CZ” Zhao and the much larger Binance Holdings Ltd. earlier this month, accusing the firms of mishandling client funds and failing to contain fake trading activity. Binance.US was cut off from the US banking system by partners as a result, leaving investors unable to withdraw or deposit dollars onto the platform.
“Overall, Binance.US isn’t a systemically important US exchange, there are other more important venues for price discovery,” said Dessislava Aubert, a senior analyst at Kaiko. “However, its recent downfall highlights how crucial trust is in the industry, as it heavily relies on confidence.”
The daily trading volume for Bitcoin in dollars is only around $30,000 on Binance.US, down from an average of $12 million in the first quarter of this year, Aubert said.
Binance.US is meant to be the only way that Americans can interact with the company, blocked from trading on the international Binance.com venue which the firm says operates separately from the US entity. The difference in size between the two — Binance.US did about $6 billion in monthly volume in May, compared to Binance.com’s $212 billion — means options for US investors seeking a way to cash out from the exchange are limited, while diminishing liquidity makes trading between Binance.US customers even tougher.
The US exchange’s share of the broader digital assets market is minor, taking in about 1.5% of total weekly trading volume among American crypto platforms as of June 20. That’s down from 22% of all activity in late March, when Binance.US was at its peak.
TrueUSD, a stablecoin favored by Binance on its main venue with lower fees than other coins, dropped to as low as 80 cents from its intended $1 value on Binance.US on Wednesday. The token’s peg remained intact elsewhere, trading at an average of around 99.8 cents as of midday in London, according to pricing from CoinGecko.
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