Binance, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, announced yesterday in a blog post its intention to remove AMP token from its U.S. platform on August 15. The decision was made after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) identified AMP as a security in a fraud case involving a former Coinbase employee.
Binance stated that, although AMP had previously passed the risk assessment process that the exchange uses to decide whether to list a token or not, a recent SEC report prompted the company to remove the token as a precautionary measure. Binance indicated that it would wait for further regulatory clarity before relisting the token.
Interestingly, the exchange hinted that AMP would only be removed from its Binance.US platform, meaning that Binance users from other parts of the world will likely still have access to trading services for AMP. AMP deposits will be closed on August 15 at 9:00 PM ET, and the AMP/USD trading pair will be removed two hours later.
The SEC, in a filing on July 21, designated AMP and eight other tokens as securities before announcing five days later that it was investigating Coinbase for listing securities. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler stated last week that he sees no significant differences between cryptocurrency exchanges and securities exchanges, and that both should be regulated similarly.
Binance is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. Despite the recent market downturn, the platform currently processes over 17 billion dollars in daily trading volume, while its U.S. subsidiary, Binance.US, handles more than 400 million dollars. Binance has faced criticism from regulators in the past for poor compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) regulations. However, the exchange has recently been making efforts to tighten its requirements.
