Texts From Crypto Giant Binance Reveal Plan to Elude U.S. Authorities

Binance exploded onto the crypto scene in 2017 and grew into the world’s biggest digital-currency exchange. It quickly ran into a problem.

It largely operated from hubs in China and then Japan, yet a fifth of its customers were in the U.S., where authorities signaled a coming crackdown on unregulated offshore crypto players. Any lawsuit from U.S. regulators would be like “nuclear fall out” for Binance’s business and its officers, a Binance executive warned colleagues in a 2019 private chat.

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