The world’s largest digital asset exchange Binance is preparing to face fines and penalties to resolve pending regulatory and police investigations in the United States.
According to a February 15 WSJ report Citing the company’s chief strategy officer, Patrick Hillmann, Binance has been working with regulators to fix past compliance issues.
Hillmann stated that Binance is “working with the regulators to figure out what are the remediations that we need to go through now to make amends for that.”
He added that the result of the ongoing investigations will likely be fines, but could be more, saying “that’s for the regulators to decide.”
Binance has been the subject of several investigations in the US, including one that began in 2018 by the Department of Justice over possible violations of anti-money laundering laws.
In March 2021, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) also investigated whether the company offered crypto derivatives to US clients without registering with the agency.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also launched an investigation into Binance’s US division in February 2022 regarding trading companies connected to CEO Changpeng Zhao.
Hillmann added that Binance was “very confident and felt very good about where those discussions are going,” but could not give a figure on the size of the fines or the timeframe for resolution with US regulators.
He said the lack of clarity about cryptocurrencies in the United States made it a “very confusing time for us.”
The SEC has recently stepped up what industry watchers are calling a “war on cryptocurrency,” which appears to target certain staking services and stablecoins that it views as being subject to securities laws.
Referring to the recent enforcement activity, the Binance executive said that it “would have a really deep and long-lasting chilling effect in the United States.”
Related: Bad day for Binance with SEC investigation and Reuters exposure
Earlier this week, regulators in New York cracked down on Paxos, preventing it from issuing more of the Binance-branded BUSD stablecoin.
Last week, American crypto exchange Kraken was fined $30 million and ordered to halt its staking services following SEC enforcement action.
Patrick Hillmann concluded that solving the problems with US regulators would be good for the company and for the future.
“It will be a good time for our company because it allows us to put it behind us.”
Cointelegraph reached out to Binance for further comment and did not receive a response by press time.
