By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) -The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday voluntarily dismissed its civil lawsuit against Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, extending the regulator’s new approach to cryptocurrencies since President Donald Trump reentered the White House.
A joint stipulation of dismissal signed by lawyers for the SEC, Binance and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao was filed in the Washington, D.C., federal court.
The SEC called the dismissal appropriate “in the exercise of its discretion and as a policy matter.”
Neither the SEC nor its lawyers immediately responded to requests for comment. The dismissal is with prejudice, meaning the regulator cannot pursue the enforcement case again.
In a statement, a Binance spokesperson called the dismissal “a landmark moment. We’re deeply grateful to (SEC) Chairman Paul Atkins and the Trump administration for recognizing that innovation can’t thrive under regulation by enforcement.”
The SEC sued Binance and Zhao in June 2023, accusing the exchange of artificially inflating trading volumes, diverting customer funds and misleading investors about its surveillance controls.
Binance was also accused of unlawfully facilitating trading of several cryptocurrency tokens that SEC leadership during President Joe Biden’s administration believed should have been registered as securities.
The case was separate from Binance’s November 2023 guilty plea and more than $4.3 billion penalty for violating federal anti-money laundering and sanctions laws through lapses in internal controls.
In February, the SEC dismissed a separate enforcement lawsuit accusing Coinbase, the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, of arranging trading in at least 13 tokens that were also unregistered securities.
Atkins said on May 12 that developing a regulatory framework that establishes “clear rules of the road” for issuing, trading and safekeeping crypto assets, while discouraging lawbreakers, would be a key priority of his SEC leadership.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Chris Prentice in New York, and Hannah Lang and Jasper Ward in Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler and Daniel Wallis)
