Binance Records $4.6 Billion in Inflows Following US Government Settlement

Last November, Binance paid a landmark $4.3 billion settlement to the U.S. government.

Since then, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange has recorded net inflows of $4.6 billion, Bloomberg News reported Thursday (Jan. 18), citing data from DefiLlama.

The report says that figure vastly outpaces what Binance’s biggest competitors took in, with the platform pulling in $3.5 billion so far this month, the largest intake since at least November 2022.

Binance’s settlement was part of a guilty plea agreement that saw the company admit to money laundering and sanctions evasion. As part of that deal, CEO and founder Changpeng Zhao agreed to step down and enter his own plea. He is scheduled to be sentenced next month.

As Bloomberg notes, Binance has reaped the benefits of a crypto revival in recent months, with the price of Bitcoin jumping nearly 160% last year. This month saw the industry’s most popular token win a victory when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved the first bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

However, new Binance CEO Richard Teng also faces numerous challenges, the report adds: setting up a global headquarters, naming a board and appointing an independent monitor for three years, as dictated by the government settlement.

The company also recently faced setbacks in India, when authorities there blocked the websites of Binance and other exchanges and ordered Apple and Google to remove those companies’ apps from their stores.

Binance is also facing a lawsuit from the SEC, filed in June of last year. The regulator accused the company and Zhao of engaging in “an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure and calculated evasion of the law,” as SEC Gary Gensler said at the time.

Binance has pledged to “vigorously defend” its platform in court. Meanwhile, rival Coinbase — which was sued at the same time as Binance — this week went to court asking a judge to dismiss the case.

Company attorney William Savitt argued that the tokens traded on the exchange should not be considered securities under the jurisdiction of the SEC.

Savitt stressed that buyers of these tokens do not acquire any rights associated with their purchases, the way they would with traditional stocks or bonds.

“It’s the difference between buying Beanie Babies Inc. and buying Beanie Babies,” he said.