At a time when the Senate is considering imposing on all crypto-actors the possession of the PSAN license to practice, 15 French investors have decided to take Binance to court for “violation of the regulations”. The PSAN license (for Digital Asset Service Provider) was issued to Binance on May 4th. The cryptocurrency exchange has since suffered the collapse of TerraUSD (UST), and its victims are now coming forward for deceptive trading practices and harboring scams.
According to their lawyers, the plaintiffs are aged between 25 and 55, of French nationality, and since the fall of the stablecoin TerraUSD have lost a total of 2.5 million euros on the Binance platform. At the beginning of May, thousands of investors watched their capital dwindle by the minute as the second most virulent affair in the sector (after the FTX affair) broke. On Binance, then approved PSAN, the stablecoins were endowed with a “guaranteed” value express the lawyers.
In an attempt to recover their lost fortune, investors are therefore seeking to win their case from Binance by claiming that their losses are the responsibility of the company, which had not sufficiently communicated on the danger of investing its money. on crypto-currencies and in particular stablecoins. In its defense, Binance says it has always added “market risk warnings”.
An annoying Telegram group
At a time when the FTX affair has further motivated parliamentarians to regulate crypto players more severely, the 15 investors hope that justice will be on their side. For this, their complaint is also the subject of Binance’s behavior before it obtained the PSAN. According to them, the platform did not respect the rules of the AMF (the Financial Markets Authority) by communicating in France on its products. The rule is that without obtaining this precious sesame, the companies cannot do any promotion on French soil or on the internet aimed at the French target.
The plaintiffs point to an “official” Telegram channel, dubbed “Binance French”, which would have allowed the company to federate the market discreetly. The Instagram account is also targeted. In response, Binance said that this group was “a community group made up of French-speaking users from all over the world”. The plaintiffs meanwhile claimed that it was created by Binance and was “branded as the official group”.
Binance’s weight in cryptocurrency exchanges is impressive. Undisputed leader, media statistics The Block (funded by FTX) revealed that Binance’s market share reached 55% in the 24 hours of trading prior to the publication (as of last October). Since then, with weakened competition, its situation seems even stronger, but the overall loss of investor confidence in centralized platforms (CeFi) has also played tricks on it. Last Thursday, December 15, the equivalent of 3 billion dollars in cryptocurrency were withdrawn from the platform by users.
