Investors pull $790 million from crypto exchange Binance after SEC charges

Crypto investors pulled $791.6 million from the crypto exchange Binance in 24 hours, crypto research firm Nansen said Tuesday, after U.S. regulators unveiled 13 securities charges against the company and its founder, Changpeng Zhao.

After the collapse of allegedly fraudulent crypto exchange FTX in November 2022, investors moved their assets to a number of exchanges, but Binance won the lion's share of those inflows. Following Monday's Securities and Exchange Commission charges, it appears some of those gains have been returned.

Investors withdrew $1.65 billion worth of assets from Binance and $13 million from contested Binance's U.S. arm on the Ethereum blockchain after the charges were unveiled. Inflows totaled only $871.8 million and $11.53 million to Binance and Binance.US, respectively.

The SEC alleged that Binance had been engaging in the unregistered offer and sale of securities, and that Zhao and his entities had improperly commingled investor funds with Binance's funds. The agency also alleged that the exchange subverted its own controls to allow institutional U.S. investors to use Binance's international exchange, rather than the supposedly firewalled U.S. version.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission had already unveiled a similar set of charges against the crypto exchange earlier this year. The allegations of commingling and compliance failings echo the charges leveled against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and his collapsed exchange.

Zhao and Binance's two entities have strongly disputed the allegations.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that the Securities and Exchange Commission brought the charges against Binance and Zhao. A previous version misstated the agency's name.