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Binance halted trades across several Binance Coin (BNB) and Ethereum (ETH) token pairs in the latest shake-up since the company was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission last week.
On Monday, the company said that it ended trading for more than a dozen pairs that involve its native BNB token, the defunct Binance USD (BUSD) stablecoin, and five involving ETH. The trades began to cease at 11:00 p.m. EST on Sunday and the rest were frozen by 4 a.m. EST Monday morning.
Users on its international exchange were reminded that they can still trade in the currencies as part of other pairs on the platform, but were advised to cancel their Trading Bots before the removals were completed to avoid losses. A trading bot is an automated tool on Binance that can automatically run trades for users.
Binance did not connect the announcements with any response to the SEC lawsuit, but it comes as the latest change affecting trading operations on the platform.
Last Wednesday, Binance US eliminated more than forty crypto trading pairs, with the majority using the stablecoin Tether (USDT) as its pair. Other tokens paired with Bitcoin and BUSD were also impacted. Left untouched on the exchange were trades involving token pairs with Solana (SOL) and Polygon (MATIC), among others that the SEC listed as unregistered securities in their lawsuit against Binance.
A day later, Binance US said its banking service providers had signaled they would be pausing fiat currency, or US dollar, withdrawals starting as soon as June 13, and that the platform would operate as a "crypto-only exchange" until it found new partners. It said crypto services, including staking products that the SEC also flagged in its lawsuit, would remain operational.
On June 5, the SEC launched a 13-count lawsuit against Binance and its founder CEO Changpeng Zhao that accused them of violating securities laws that include failing to register as an exchange and engaging in unregistered crypto transactions among other allegations.
The company has denied any wrongdoing, and accused the SEC of waging an "ideological campaign" against the cryptocurrency industry by targeting it and other major firms.