Binance, the biggest crypto exchange by trading volume, is facing controversial allegations which involve insider trading allegations. Its monitoring team recommended removing DWF after investigators took out the Tron Foundation last summer.
Binance under fire?
According to reports, Binance’s compliance department went on to believe that there was insufficient evidence. However, they believed that the head of the monitoring team worked closely with DWF’s competitors and fired him.
It mentioned that their investigator team found out that DWF manipulated YGG price and at least six other tokens. They allegedly did more than $300 million in wash trading in 2023. DWF went on to sell around 5 million tokens in two batches near the peak.
The crypto exchange has reportedly stated that the monitoring team discovered the false transactions. It turned out to be proprietary transactions and did not constitute manipulation. Binance suggested that the head of the monitoring team cooperated too closely with DWF’s competitors on the case.
Binance in an X (formerly Twitter) post gave a response to the WSJ report. The exchange stated that it stands by its strict market surveillance program and does not tolerate market abuse. It highlighted that over the last three years, they have offboarded nearly 355,000 users with a transaction volume of more than $2.5 trillion for violating our terms of use.
It added that market maker competition is getting hard and the investigation team needs to be neutral. They need to look at the evidence without any bias. This includes bias that might be coming from other firms’ claims against their competitors.
DWF replies
DWF Labs also replied on the matter. It stated that they operate with the highest standards of integrity, transparency, and ethics. It mentioned that back in 2022, Andrei Grachev founded DWF Labs has gained the trust of over 700 companies, platforms, and institutions. It provides liquidity to markets for more than a quarter of the 100 largest crypto native projects.
This comes in when the crypto market is witnessing major fluctuation with Bitcoin price action giving mixed reactions. The global crypto market cap has shrunken to stand at $2.27 trillion with a 24 hour trading volume of $65 billion.
Bitcoin price has dropped by more than 13% in the last 24 hours. BTC is trading at an average price of $61,424, at the press time. Its 24 hour trading volume is marginally up to stand at $24.8 billion.
