Binance is like a grocery store selling oranges and the SEC should leave it alone, says crypto lobby group

The US Digital Chamber of Commerce, a crypto advocacy group, is backing Binance in its fight against the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which earlier this year charged the crypto exchange's US affiliate with various security breaches.

as if amicus brief The group filed a lawsuit Thursday, saying the SEC is stifling financial innovation and driving crypto startups offshore by creating an aggressive regulatory environment in the United States. What's more, the group says the SEC got its analysis of crypto assets completely wrong.

“The SEC is prosecuting a grocery store that sells oranges and other fruits, or an online e-commerce marketplace like Amazon,” the group wrote. They are not securities by themselves, and the markets in which they are available for buying and selling are not securities exchanges.

Since Gary Gensler took over as SEC chairman, the commission has issued dozens of enforcement actions against digital asset companies. This year, some of these names include the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Binance, Coinbase and Kraken.

Alleged violations include offering unregistered products as a service and listing coins on their platforms that violate security laws. Coinbase And others have disputed claims that there are no clear guidelines yet for cryptocurrencies to end up being safe.

According to the lobbyist group, the SEC's arguments fail to distinguish between “the security issue of the investment contract” and “the investment contract itself”, which has led them to falsely label many crypto tokens as unregistered securities.

“The SEC has taken a regulatory-by-enforcement approach by arbitrarily classifying various blockchain-based digital assets as securities and penalizing businesses for failing to obtain SEC registrations for them,” the council wrote in the brief.

According to the SEC filing in June, some of the security tokens listed by Binance include its native token BNB, stablecoin BUSD, and other popular crypto assets such as Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), and Polygon (MATIC).

A federal court ruled in part against the SEC when it tried to claim some of the XRP sales were unregistered securities offerings by the asset's issuer, Ripple. SEC on Thursday He dropped the lawsuit against Ripple executives But he is still pursuing an appeal against the company.