🚨 Did we just avoid a meltdown?

GM everyone. This is 2036. We scroll for gems all day so you don’t have to.

Here’s what we’re serving up today 🍲: yesterday, Binance CEO CZ stepped down and agreed to pay a $4 BILLION fine in the US for money laundering charges. Does Binance risk becoming the next FTX?

Let’s dig in.

Yesterday was wild.

Sam Altman got reinstated at OpenAI.

No one knows exactly why he was fired in the first place (yet), but former employees at OpenAI published an open letter describing Sam’s deceptive and manipulative tendencies.

His sister also accused him of sexual abuse.

It’s an unfolding saga that’s keeping all of tech on its toes 👣

But the Sam drama also overshadowed another (more) important matter to us crypto degenerates: yesterday, CZ, the founder of Binance, agreed to step down as CEO.

CZ pleaded guilty to money laundering laws and agreed to pay a $4.3 BILLION fine.

Binance also agreed to exit its US operations completely 🇺🇸.

This is BIG news. Here’s why…

Binance is the world’s largest crypto exchange. It handles ∼70% of all trading volume and holds ∼$67 billion in assets for clients.

This means it’s the most significant centralized point of failure - the biggest risk to crypto.

If you thought FTX was bad… a collapse of Binance would be much worse.

Here’s the thing: the US government doesn’t like Binance.

Binance has US operations that the government says violate a bunch of regulatory rules.

So we’ve known for months that the SEC was coming for Binance in one way or another.

We just didn’t know how.

That overhang created some tension in crypto. A lot of people were sidelined because of it.

And importantly, the SEC allegedly couldn’t approve a Bitcoin ETF as long as non-compliant actors were involved.

But that seems to be behind us now.

The US government - and the SEC - scored a win 🎖️

Binance will leave the US entirely. Its CEO will step down.

And the US has proven that no matter where you find yourself in the world - if you want to operate in the US, you’ll have to comply.

This now leaves an open path for the SEC to approve a Bitcoin ETF.

Coinbase - a regulated publicly-traded company - will custody the bitcoin for the big boys like Fidelity and Blackrock and their ETFs.

And Binance will pursue its dominance outside of the US.

In the meantime, CZ will retain 80% ownership of Binance and spend his time looking into DeFi.

Not a bad outcome for the king of crypto.

The market reaction to the Binance news was scattered.

But we think it’s great news.

We just got rid of one of the biggest risks to the crypto bull market.

From here on, we may resume our upward march.

1/ Binance pays $4.3 billion to settle criminal case

2/ Bernstein: “Binance will retain its international dominance”

3/ Yellen: “Historic Binance settlement sends message to crypto industry”