On Monday, a federal judge temporarily halted Voyager Digital’s plans to sell for $1.3B to Binance.US due to ongoing legal challenges from the U.S. government. This pause allows the government additional time to pursue its appeals against the deal’s legality while further action is taken.
Judge Jennifer Rearden of Manhattan’s U.S. District ordered a suspension of the sale. Voyager argued that delaying the sale might lead to Binance.US backing out of the deal completely. However, the judge rejected this argument.
Voyager Digital filed for bankruptcy back in July 2022. Recently, the company filed documents stating that the appeals made by the Department of Justice should not be allowed to leave the company and its customers uncertain about their situation for an undefined period of time during a legal proceeding.
Voyager has suffered a setback. The company had been attempting to emerge from bankruptcy and reimburse its customers since declaring Chapter 11. The proposed sale of Voyager’s customer accounts to Binance’s US branch is estimated at around $1 billion, primarily representing the substantial value of those accounts.
Additionally, on Monday, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a lawsuit against the global crypto exchange, Binance. The lawsuit claims it ran an “unlawful” platform and did not have proper compliance measures. This is a distinct legal action from previous lawsuits brought against Binance.
The CFTC claimed in their legal case that Binance employees controlled the corporate strategy, launch, and initial operations of Binance.US, and that there is a continuing association with BAM Trading, which is supervised by Changpeng Zhao – the CEO and founder of Binance.
Binance.US claims that it functions as a separate entity from Binance.com and acts as the US-based collaborator for the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world.
