Binance and SEC file joint motion pausing legal case for 60 days

• FOX Business journalist Eleanor Terrett believes it could open the door for other companies facing SEC lawsuits
• The SEC sued Binance and its former CEO, Changpeng Zhao, in 2023 for violating securities laws in the US

Binance and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have filed a joint motion pausing their legal case for 60 days.

According to the document, the new SEC crypto taskforce – created by acting SEC chair Mark Uyeda – may have had a possible impact on the case.

The motion, submitted to the US District Court for the District of Columbia on February 10, reads: “The work of this task force may impact and facilitate the potential resolution of this case.”

According to FOX Business journalist Eleanor Terrett, this could open the door for other companies facing SEC lawsuits.

In a post on X, Terrett said: “I expect we’ll see other non-fraud cases (i.e. @Ripple, @coinbase, @krakenfx and others) follow suit in this manner.”

🚨NEW: Here’s the first requested pause on #crypto litigation in the courts since @MarkUyedaUS took over as acting chair. @binance and the @SECGov have just filed a joint motion to stay the agency’s case against the exchange for 60 days, citing the new SEC crypto task force as… pic.twitter.com/D2zcolMNC5

— Eleanor Terrett (@EleanorTerrett) February 11, 2025

SEC lawsuits

In June 2023, the SEC sued Binance and its former CEO, Changpeng Zhao, for violating securities rules in the US.

According to a report, the agency argued that Binance secretly enabled high-value US customers to trade on the platform as an unregistered securities exchange and broker-dealer.

Coinbase, which is fighting the SEC, was granted an interlocutory appeal in January, temporarily suspending its ongoing court case. According to the SEC, Coinbase amounted “to the operation of an unregistered brokerage, exchange, and clearing agency in violation of federal securities laws.”

Ripple and its long-running case with the SEC stems from its XRP token. In 2020, the SEC sued Ripple, Chris Larsen, and Garlinghouse, alleging that they raised $1.3 billion through the sale of XRP, an unregistered securities offering, according to the regulator.