Binance.US, the U.S.-based arm of the world’s largest crypto exchange, is delisting the Amp token, one of nine cryptocurrencies the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission classified as unregistered securities last month.
It was the first major crypto exchange in the United States to halt the trading of one of the assets cited by the SEC. Still, Binance’s global trading platform, which offers Amp and Powerledger, another of the nine tokens, has not delisted either.
“We operate in a rapidly evolving industry, and our listing and delisting processes are designed to be responsive to market and regulatory developments,” Binance.US wrote in a blog post on Monday. The company said it was removing the asset “out of an abundance of caution” effective August 15 and won’t resume trading “until more clarity exists around the classification of AMP.”
Binance did not respond to a Forbes request for comment.
The SEC identified the cryptocurrencies as securities in an insider-trading case brought against a former employee of Coinbase, a Binance rival. The civil suit also named a friend and a brother of the employee, and the Department of Justice filed a parallel criminal lawsuit against the trio.
The other cryptocurrencies cited by the SEC are the RallyRLY -0.9% (RLY), DerivaDao (DDX), XYO (XYO), and Rari (RGTGT +1.9%), LCX (LCX), DFX Finance (DFX), and Kromatika (KROM) tokens. Amp is the only coin from the list offered on the Binance.US platform.
Forbes reported last week that the knock-on effects of the Coinbase suit would likely strike other exchanges, prompting them to delist assets deemed securities by the SEC. Still, the biggest crypto marketplaces that offer those tokens have yet to take action.
Kraken, a San Francisco-based exchange that lists Powerledger, wrote in a statement to Forbes that it “takes its role as the facilitator of a secure and compliant global trading platform very seriously. We do not list securities. Our teams conduct thorough risk and security evaluations for every asset list, including a comprehensive legal and compliance process.”
Echoing Caroline Pham, a Commodities Futures Trading Commission member who called the SEC case a “striking example of regulation by enforcement,” Coinbase’s chief legal officer Paul Grewal responded to the allegations in a blog post last month, “We agree with Commissioner Pham and, respectfully, 100% disagree with the SEC’s decision to file these securities fraud charges and the substance of the charges themselves.”
“Coinbase does not list securities on its platform. Period,” he wrote.
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