The US SEC has sued both Coinbase and Binance for allegedly violating securities laws.
Most of the outflows are occurring through Ethereum Network.
Between Monday and Thursday, there was a net outflow of $3.1B through the Ethereum network alone.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) started by suing Binance, and its US affiliate that operates Binance.US before casting the net wider to include Coinbase. The SEC filed a lawsuit against accusing Binance, its American firm Binance.US, and CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao of breaking federal securities laws Monday. It then filed a lawsuit against Coinbase on Tuesday for allegedly selling unregistered securities to the general public.
The SEC lawsuit has spurred panic among investors especially since the SEC argues that several crypto assets listed on the exchanges are securities rather than digital assets. The tokens identified as securities have registered a significant price decline with Binance’s BNB, Polygon’s MATIC, and Cardano’s ADA experiencing the most drops.
$4 billion in outflows in four days
According to data from blockchain analytics companies Nansen and Glassnode, Binance, Binance.US, and Coinbase experienced a net outflow of $3.1 billion through the Ethereum network and $864 million in bitcoin (BTC) between Monday and Thursday.
Despite the regulatory difficulties, the exchanges processed the withdrawals promptly throughout the week and no delays have been reported so far.
According to Nansen data, Binance, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume, observed a net outflow of $2 billion on the Ethereum blockchain in just four days. This sum includes all Ethereum-based tokens including ETH. According to Glassnode’s data, BTC withdrawals were higher than deposits by about 31,868 BTC ($838 million).
Binance saw a sizeable net outflow on Wednesday of 13,953 BTC, the largest daily drawdown since December, when a faulty reserve report and the collapse of a rival exchange, FTX, undermined investor confidence.
Although the outflows seen this week were sizable, according to Binance’s crypto wallets, they only account for about 5% of all the assets held on the exchange.
According to Nansen, Binance.US saw net outflows of $75 million from the Ethereum network. The exchange is not tracked by Glassnode, so it is difficult to track the BTC outflows. It has however been met with the full wrath of the SEC, which has sought orders to freeze all .Binance.US assets.
For Coinbase, the Ethereum network saw a net outflow of $1 billion from Monday through Thursday according to Nansen. According to Glassnode’s data, Coinbase saw $25 million worth of Bitcoin outflows.Binance
