During the 2019 launch of Binance's US division, Bitcoin transaction volume exceeded $70,000 in the first hour, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
According to an internal message from the company's CEO, Changpeng Zhao, to which the publication has had access, the demand did not come from external traders, but from the platform itself.
According to the WSJ, this situation could indicate "wash trading," making it difficult for regulators to assess the depth of the market.
Last June 5, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Binance and Zhao. The agency filed 13 charges, including the sale of unregistered securities. On June 6, the regulator filed a petition to freeze Binance.US's digital assets.
The department took an interest last year in trading companies associated with Zhao. One of them was Sigma Chain, which was a market maker and, according to the SEC, was owned by CZ himself.
The WSJ has highlighted Sigma managed dozens of accounts on the platform. According to the regulator, the day after Binance.US launched, fictitious transactions between market maker accounts and platform employees accounted for nearly 70% of trading volume.