Binance reportedly wanted SEC chair Gary Gensler to be an adviser

ambcrypto.com:

Binance – the world’s largest crypto exchange – sought to onboard Gary Gensler, the current Chairman of the U.S Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC), in 2018 and 2019. The crypto exchange wanted Gensler to serve as an adviser but the proposal was turned down, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. Nonetheless, the current SEC Chair shared some “license strategies” with Ella Zhang – former head of Binance Labs, and Harry Zhou – an employee at Binance.

Notably, the crypto exchange has previously maintained that Harry Zhou was never employed at the firm, in a lawsuit against Forbes ‘Tai Chi’ document report. The lawsuit, however, was dropped a few months later.

Moreover, Gensler had a meeting with Changpeng Zhao (CZ) – the CEO of Binance – in March 2019 in Tokyo. The chair had also held a video interview with CZ for a course on crypto at MIT.

Binance and Binance.US have been “much more intertwined than the companies have disclosed,” claimed the Wall Street Journal report. Based on interviews and messages reviewed by WSJ, the world’s largest crypto exchange and its American affiliate had mixed staff and finances. Moreover, the report claims that the global crypto exchange possibly had access to Binance.US’ customer data. This was because the global exchange’s team maintained the code supporting Binance.US’ customers’ crypto wallets.

The interlink between both platforms was witnessed when an employee based in Shanghai launched the trading services for Binance.US before launch time. The incident reportedly occurred in September 2019. The WSJ report also claims that the global crypto exchange sought ways to allow US customers to continue derivative trading. This was despite Binance announcing it would discontinue