U.S. authorities have targeted many cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, KuCoin, Tornado Cash, and Ripple.
Several cryptocurrency companies have been the targets of lawsuits brought by regulatory authorities of the US government over the years, all with the goal of ensuring that their offerings comply with certain regulations.
A long list of cases has been made, but some have stood out. For example, charges have been filed against big companies like Binance and Coinbase, decentralized systems like Uniswap, and platforms that mix cryptocurrencies like Tornado Cash.
The United States government has escalated its efforts to combat cryptographic entities over the past year. Binance and Coinbase, the two biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world and the United States, were both sued within 48 hours of each other in early June by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Allegations against the businesses were comparable and included breaches of U.S. securities laws, clearing agencies, national securities exchanges, and broker registration requirements.
The DOJ arrested the co-founders of Tornado Cash two months after the complaints against Binance and Coinbase, accusing them of laundering more than $1 billion in illicit profits. This came one year after the crypto mixer was sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control for its connections to criminal organizations.
Similar to the cases it filed against Binance and Coinbase, the SEC sued Kraken, another cryptocurrency exchange, towards the year’s close. Binance and its creator, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), were both charged by the DOJ with willful violations of the Bank Secrecy Act around the same time. There was a $50 million punishment for CZ’s resignation as CEO and a $4.3 billion fine for the cryptocurrency exchange as a result of the lawsuit.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed charges against KuCoin and its creators in March 2024, alleging that they were running an unregistered money-transmitting company and breaching the Bank Secrecy Act.
The reason(s) for the SEC’s decision to prosecute Uniswap Labs, the firm behind the biggest decentralized cryptocurrency exchange Uniswap, remain unknown as of last month. Consensys, a blockchain software technology business, got a Wells Notice from the agency around the same time, indicating that they were going to take enforcement action against the company for securities law violations via its MetaMask wallet.
Samourai, a crypto wallet that prioritizes user privacy, had its creators arrested and accused by the DOJ the same month on charges of facilitating more than $100 million in laundered funds. They have taken over the wallet’s websites and disabled its services as of this writing. Also, early Bitcoin investor Roger Ver, aka Bitcoin Jesus, was detained by the DOJ not long ago for allegedly dodging taxes totaling up to $50 million.
Meanwhile, the SEC’s action against Ripple stands apart in the market and has helped the crypto community understand crypto asset securities.
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