SEC’s Gensler asserts “parallels” between FTX and Binance, however one was not sued

FTX is the lone big player who has not been sued by the SEC, according to various members of the cryptocurrency community.

The collapsed exchange FTX and cryptocurrency exchange Binance are said to have “parallels” in that they both allegedly used sister companies to transfer funds. This was suggested by the United States Securities Chair.

In an interview with Bloomberg on June 6, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler brought up the alleged deception and manipulation involving FTX’s sister company Alameda Research, as well as the suspected involvement of Sam Bankman-Fried, the company’s founder.

“There’s a business model that bundles and commingles functions that we don’t see, nor would we allow elsewhere, in finance,” he claimed.

The SEC brought 13 accusations against Binance in a complaint that was submitted on June 5. One of the charges made in the lawsuit is that money from Binance and Binance.US was combined into an account managed by the Merit Peak Limited, a company connected to Changpeng Zhao.

The “primary undisclosed market making trading firm Sigma Chain,” which is owned by Zhao, is alleged to have been used by Binance.US to engage in wash trading.

“Platform after platform, entrepreneurs […] are trying to build wealth for themselves and their investors through sister organizations—hedge funds—trading against the customers,” claimed Gensler.

Therefore, where is the FTX lawsuit?

The recent interview is sure to intensify the ongoing discussion on Twitter about why the SEC hasn’t filed a lawsuit against FTX.

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, claimed in a tweet on June 6 that the SEC’s current round of litigation is an effort to “distract” attention away from the agency’s “FTX debacle.”

Others noted that another cause would be Bankman-Fried’s previous frequent lobbying in Washington, D.C., as well as FTX’s substantial contributions to political parties.

Markus Thielen, the director of research and strategy at Matrixport and the writer of Crypto Titans, provided a another viewpoint. He emphasised to Cointelegraph that before FTX, crypto was not thought to pose a significant threat to the integrity of the American financial system.

The failure of three big banks this year, he claimed, has shown otherwise.

Fixing or halting the crypto trains wasn’t initially a key concern, according to Thielen. After FTX, “people realised that it’s really billions of dollars.”

The sense of “embarrassment” exists, according to Thielen, for those who did not anticipate the problems at FTX, such as parliamentarians.

You could argue that those individuals are a little humiliated, so they must exert extra effort to truly remove themselves from it.

The SEC has filed charges against the FTX exchange’s founders and former executives, despite the fact that the exchange itself has not yet been named as a defendant in a lawsuit.

Sam Bankman-Fried, Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh are some of the previous executives of FTX. Sam Bankman-Fried served as the company’s former CEO.

The SEC was contacted by Cointelegraph for comment, but no response was given right away.