Former Binance Executives Called the Exchange a Sinking Ship: SEC Evidence

• Crypto analyst Adam Cochran posted conversations used as the SEC’s evidence against Binance. 
• These include chats between Samuel Lim, former Binance compliance lead, and Alvin, former Binance BD head.
• The revelations have divided the crypto Twitter with several members supporting Binance.

As the SEC vs. Binance case churns out revelations every day, evidence from several testimonies has surfaced. Earlier today, crypto analyst and Partner at Cinneamhain Ventures Adam Cochran posted the SEC’s evidence against Binance which included internal chat logs between Samuel Lim, a former compliance lead at Binance and Alvin, the previous head of Binance’s Business Development.

The first image of the conversation that Cochran posted in a 15-part thread showed Alvin predicting that BNB was heading to “zero,” followed by Lim’s infamous quote that has, in a very short time, spread like wildfire across the crypto space: “We are operating as a fucking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.”

Images of the conversation revealed that Lim specifically asked Alvin to dump his BNB bonus into USDT as it would be the smartest thing to do. “Anyone who takes BNB now is fxxxxxg brave,” said Lim.

Interestingly, the two often called Binance “a sinking ship” in these conversations. During a discussion where they were trying to get an American lawyer to come in as the COO, Alvin argued that he felt that the risk rewards weren’t balanced and that he wouldn’t feel comfortable signing off on the OFAC compliance if he were the COO.

Another interesting find from the conversation was where Alvin and Lim detailed how Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao knew exactly what happened in regards to why people did not want to sign off on the OFAC reporting. The scandalous conversation even included a part where Lim stated, “There is no fxxxxxg way we are clean. I have seen nothing to prove we are.”

The SEC also presents a translated recording of Zhao specifically noting the 2019 blocking of US users and how they should approach slowly getting US users to use foreign KYC and ignore the IP addresses.

However, in the comment section under the post, several Twitter users expressed their skepticism. “So in December 2018, a guy said BNB can go to ZERO. LMEOW,” replied one user, while another argued that he did not see anything wrong with the screenshots. According to this user, the bad thing would be for Binance to trade against their users.