Judge agrees to pause legal dispute between Binance and SEC until April

A Washington D.C. district judge has allowed Binance and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to stay their legal dispute for the next 60 days.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the case to be stayed and also asked for both to file a joint status report by April 14, according to an order posted on Thursday. 

Binance and the SEC asked the court to pause the case in a court filing on Monday, citing the SEC's new crypto task force aimed at creating a clear regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies. 

New SEC Acting Chair Mark Uyeda picked fellow Republican Commissioner Hester Peirce to lead that SEC crypto task force in late January. Peirce recently released a set of priorities for her task force, including classifying some tokens as "non-securities."

The SEC under the Trump administration has taken a very different regulatory stance than under the past administration so far. The agency's former Chair Gary Gensler had been weary of crypto and repeatedly called for crypto firms to register. During his time at the agency, the SEC brought several lawsuits involving registration charges against those firms, including Binance.

The SEC sued Binance in 2023 over being unregistered and misrepresenting trading controls. That same year, Binance and former CEO Changpeng Zhao pled guilty to Bank Secrecy Act violations and agreed to pay over $4 billion to resolve a Justice Department investigation. 

The top securities watchdog in the U.S. sued Coinbase in 2023 for operating unlawfully as a broker, exchange and clearing agency. Coinbase filed an appeal in April, claiming substantial grounds for differences of opinion and the judge there in New York later granted the exchange's move to appeal. The SEC is expected to respond to Coinbase's appeal on Friday.