In the long-standing legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Binance has called a ruling by District Judge Amy Berman Jackson a win after Jackson dismissed three claims against the company in a late June hearing. This announcement came in a July 1 blog post from Binance.
Binance referred to the ruling as "more than a legal win" in a July 2 blog post, stating, "it recognizes that there are critical limits on the SEC’s regulatory authority over the crypto industry."
According to Binance, the court dismissed claims by the SEC that BUSD is sold as an investment contract, ruling instead that it was marketed as a stablecoin without suggesting that investors expected to see increased value. The judge also rejected that cryptocurrency is an investment contract and subject to SEC regulation.
The claim that secondary market sales of BNB tokens on cryptocurrency exchanges are classified as securities transactions was also dismissed. The court stated that the SEC "failed to plead that purchasers in secondary market sales acquired BNB with an expectation of profits, rather than for other uses, which is a key criterion for passing the Howey Test," according to a July 2 blog post from Binance.
However, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson upheld 10 of 13 charges against Binance in its legal battle with the SEC on June 28, according to a report from CryptoSlate. Jackson allowed charges related to the initial coin offering, ongoing BNB sales, staking services, failure to register, and fraud to proceed to trial.
Binance is recognized as the world’s leading blockchain ecosystem. According to its About page, it has an average daily volume of $65 billion and had 300 billion spot transactions in 2022. The company offers various services including a cryptocurrency exchange, an open-access learning hub, a nonprofit organization, research initiatives, an official NFT marketplace, and Binance Square.