Binance.US sent a letter to Voyager Digital on Tuesday, terminating its $1 billion digital asset buyout plan from the crypto lender.
“While this development is disappointing, our chapter 11 plan allows for direct distribution of cash and crypto to customers (a ‘toggle option’) via the Voyager platform,” said Voyager in a tweet.
The firm plans to provide information on the next steps to reimburse creditors of the platform through direct deposits, and said that Binance.US would now be required to destroy all Voyager customer information it has received under the terms of the deal.
In a tweet shortly after Voyager’s announcement, Binance.US attributed the decision to end the deal to a “hostile and uncertain regulatory climate” in the U.S.
https://t.co/AZwoBOgsqS has made the difficult decision to exercise its right to terminate the asset purchase agreement with Voyager.
While our hope throughout this process was to help Voyager's customers access their crypto in kind, the hostile and uncertain regulatory climate…
— Binance.US 🇺🇸 (@BinanceUS) April 25, 2023
The decision also comes despite the fact that Voyager’s creditor committee reached an agreement with the U.S. government on April 20 that would allow the deal to go ahead as planned.
At the time, the government’s approval was seen as a win for the bankrupt crypto lender and its creditors, following months of back and forth with securities regulators since the deal was first announced in December.
Meanwhile, Binance has been in conversations with officials from the U.S. Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regarding an ongoing lawsuit filed by the regulator last month. The CFTC charged Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) with violating U.S. regulations by unlawfully operating a derivatives exchange in the country.
According to CFTC commissioner Kristin N. Johnson, the conversations between the regulator and the crypto exchange in its crosshairs have not yielded any resolutions just yet.
“As of the moment, we can conclude that there is not an immediate path forward,” Johnson said in an interview with CNBC.
“That doesn’t mean there couldn’t be one and hopefully there will be one,” she added.