Binance Downplays Reports That Company Is Leaving U.S.

Binance’s CEO is denying reports his company is considering cutting ties with U.S. businesses.

“We pulled back on some potential investments, or bids on bankrupt companies in the U.S. for now. Seek permission first” Changpeng Zhao said on Twitter Friday (Feb. 17), following reports that his company was backing away from doing business in the U.S.

Zhao did not elaborate on these comments, which came after a report by Bloomberg news that the world’s largest cryptocurrency firm was thinking about cutting ties with its business partners in the U.S.

That report — which cited an unnamed source with knowledge of the matter — said the company was considering this move due to greater regulatory scrutiny in the U.S.

It also said Binance was rethinking venture capital investments in the U.S. and was weighing de-listing tokens from its projects based in America, including the major stablecoin USD Coin.

That report followed comments earlier in the week by Patrick Hillmann, Binance’s chief strategy officer, that the company’s compliance had “gaps” that it has since closed.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) last week, Hillmann said this was a function of the company’s staff being spread too thin as it expanded on a global scale.

“It’s a tremendous burden,” Hillmann said. “As a result, there were some gaps in our compliance system in the first two years.”

He also said Binance is “working with regulators to figure out what are the remediations we have to go through now to make amends for that.”

Hillmann added those amends could mean “a fine, could be more. … We just don’t know. That is for regulators to decide.”

PYMNTS has written that Binance is the subject of a Department of Justice Investigation. The company has denied any wrongdoing.

The WSJ report cites unnamed sources who say the company is also under investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

PYMNTS wrote this week that the rules Binance and other crypto companies are being asked to follow are not new, and it is becoming apparent that crypto firms that want to keep doing business in the “U.S. need to beef up their legal and compliance teams in order to rebuild trust.”

This is especially true if they want to regain the trust of key banking partners who have grown more and more uneasy by the government’s regulatory crackdown and the crypto industry’s poor track record of leading companies lasting more than a few years in business.

“In these challenging times, where it may very well take multiple business failures to convince the crypto industry to engage more seriously with its emergent regulatory reality, a little good faith can go a long way,” PYMNTS wrote.