The Context 162: 🛎️ Binance is not committed to compliance or users

Binance has been thrust back into the spotlight as people once again analyze its role in facilitating transactions to Iranian entities.

In response, Richard Teng, Binance’s co-chief executive, and Noah Perlman, the company’s chief compliance officer, called the criticisms unfair and unfounded.

They also claimed that for Binance, compliance is foundational and an “unbreakable promise to users.”

They claim that to help them deliver on this promise, they have a team of more than 1,500 experts working to protect those users. If each of those experts works 40 hours per week, then every week Binance is apparently investing 30 man-years of effort.

This promise is also echoed in other places, like the page on its support website entitled, ‘How to Get Your Coin Listed on Binance.com,’ which claims that “token listing on Binance goes through rigorous due diligence.”

This is also not a one-time due diligence; a separate page entitled “The Ultimate Guide to Staying Listed on Binance” claims that “a specialized Binance team continuously and rigorously evaluates the token on our platform to ensure that they remain in line with the standards that our users expect.”

TUSD up to 99.7% backed by speculative assets despite SEC settlement

I don’t believe that Binance has done even a passable job of ensuring that tokens on the platform are up to the standards that users expect.

Consider TrueUSD, a token that Binance still has listed. This stablecoin’s reserves are almost entirely inaccessible, trapped in speculative funds that will not redeem according to the SEC and lawsuits against the trust company that was supposed to hold them.

These problems are echoed in the attestations for this self-proclaimed stablecoin. These make clear that “The Hong Kong depository institution has invested all or substantially all of the collateral in other instruments to generate yield, which cannot be readily convertible to cash, and are subject to ongoing legal proceedings.”

They continue, “Techteryx has as of 25 September 2020, learned of a final judgement and settlement of a complaint brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States against the prior operators of the TrueUSD business… Techteryx has instituted proceedings against the Hong Kong Depository Institution.”

Justin Sun bailed out $500M stablecoin TUSD, report

Whatever ability this token has to redeem for users is dependent on credit extended to it from Justin Sun, who still pretends that he doesn’t own it.

Despite these problems, Binance still claims on its website that TrueUSD “is reportedly collateralized by USD held in escrow in bank accounts owned by trust companies.”

This page further falsely attributes the functioning of this token to TrustToken, which isn’t the firm that operates the token; the token is operated by Techteryx.

The legal battles of Justin Sun

Does that seem like a token that’s “in line with the standards that Binance “users expect”? Is it consistent with the efforts of “a specialized Binance team” of experts that “continuously and rigorously evaluates the token on our platform”?

I will contend that this isn’t consistent with those claims and that this illustrates the willingness of the Binance team to ignore certain compliance failures and that, despite the huge number of experts, it is failing to perform adequate due diligence on tokens it continues to list.

If Binance is willing to misrepresent Sun-affiliated stablecoins, then what else is it willing to misrepresent?

— Bennett Tomlin