By Cryptocurrency exchange Binance moved around $4 billion in USDT stablecoin in the week ending November 12th, ahead of its scheduled settlement with the US Department of Justice. The cryptocurrency firm announced that it would pay a $9.4 million penalty to settle its case with the DOJ for failing to keep its Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures in line with US regulations.
The large transfer of funds was tracked via open source blockchain tracking tools such as Etherscan, WhaleMaps, and Glassnode, which recorded 18,913,228,077 USDT tokens being moved between Tuesday and Wednesday of the November 12th week. Binance moved 40.5 billion tokens in the week with the highest outflows coming from the cold wallet.
In a separate statement issued by Binance earlier this month, the firm said it has fully cooperated with the DOJ and voluntarily implemented necessary changes in its platform. It admitted to lax AML and KYC processes at the time of the incident but assured users that the necessary security changes have since been implemented.
The settlement brings to an end a global enforcement action with the DOJ, which began in 2019. The penalty will act as a lesson to other crypto exchanges and ensure that they abide by the laws and regulations of the US authorities. The move is a step forward for increased regulatory scrutiny of the cryptocurrency world.
