Binance.US Wins Appeal to Reinstate Florida License

Binance.US has achieved a significant win in contesting the suspension of its money-services business license in Florida. The Florida First District Court of Appeal ruled that the state’s Office of Financial Regulation (OFR) lacked the legal basis to justify the emergency suspension they imposed. The suspension had been initially triggered following a guilty plea by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao in a federal court case, where he was charged with violating U.S. Anti-Money Laundering laws on November 21, 2023.

The appeals court highlighted that state law permits the OFR to suspend a money-services business license using any fair procedure, but it requires the agency to provide sufficient reasons to justify the decision. In this case, the OFR failed to consider less severe alternatives to suspension, which the appeals court saw as a critical oversight. The court emphasized that the use of the word “may” in the relevant statute implies discretion rather than obligation, indicating that additional reasoning was necessary to support the suspension decision.

The court found that suspending the Binance.US license posed significant risks to over 170,000 state account holders. Complying with the emergency suspension order would necessitate the liquidation of customers’ digital asset holdings, exposing them to financial harm due to the volatile nature of digital asset prices. This potential for financial loss and tax liabilities was a pivotal consideration in the court’s decision.

The outcome of the appeal remains open to further contestation. The OFR had suspended Binance.US’s license just a week after Zhao pleaded guilty. This suspension marked the first of multiple similar actions by various states against Binance. While Binance has appealed the OFR’s decision, the specific details of their appeal remain confidential and unavailable to the public.

In the interim, Binance.US has indicated on its website that onboarding of new users in Florida is temporarily halted. Similar disruptions have affected Binance.US operations in other states, including Alaska, Maine, North Carolina, and Oregon, where either activity was suspended or license renewals were denied. The status of Binance.US in Georgia and Ohio is still uncertain, as the company’s operations are under scrutiny.

Binance.US has never operated as a cryptocurrency exchange in some states, including Hawaii, Minnesota, New York, Texas, and Vermont. These states have rigid regulatory frameworks that likely influenced Binance’s decision not to operate there.

The Florida OFR has not provided any immediate response to requests for comments regarding the court’s decision. The suspension and the court’s ruling underscore the complexities and challenges that cryptocurrency exchanges face in navigating regulatory landscapes across different states.

This situation also illustrates the broader regulatory tightening around cryptocurrency activities in the U.S., which aims to enforce compliance with anti-money laundering regulations and protect consumers in the rapidly evolving digital asset market. The developments in Florida could serve as a precedent for how other state regulations might evolve in response to the operations of large cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance.