- The Wall Street Journal wrote about it
- Gensler was lecturing about bitcoin at the time.
Journalists from the Wall Street Journal “rolled out” another high-profile investigation against Binance. It said that in 2018-2020, the crypto exchange drew up a whole plan on how to neutralize the persecution of the US authorities and regulators. The publication proves that the American division of BinanceUS was completely controlled by the international platform Binance. They shared the same staff, finances and market makers. And the Shanghai programmers had access to the BinanceUS client base.
Interestingly, the exchange put a lot of effort into resolving possible conflicts with US regulators. They were looking for experienced lawyers/financiers to join their staff. And they were especially interested in Gerry Gensler. Recall that this is the current head of the SEC (US Securities and Exchange Commission).
So, the WSJ found out that Binance offered Gensler the position of advisor to the company. They went to it twice – in 2018 and 2019. The meetings were organized by Ella Zhang and Harry Zhou. At the time, Zhou was working for a market maker associated with Binance.
“I noticed that although Gensler turned down an advisor, he was generous with licensing strategies.” – Zhou wrote in a work chat, to which they received access WSJ journalists.
At that time, Gensler worked as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By the way, there he lectured about blockchain and bitcoin. His lessons are still relevant and popular with the crypto community.
