Binance US, the US division of the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has announced that TRON (TRX) and Spell (SPELL) will be removed from their trading platform.
On April 18, both tokens will be removed from Binance US. While withdrawals for TRX and SPELL are still allowed, trading activities and deposits are no longer possible. The exchange indicated that it will continue to support USDT and USDC stablecoins issued on the TRON network.
Why is Tron (TRX) being removed?
Binance US indicates that the delisting resulted from an evaluation, where the company considers various aspects such as trading volume, liquidity and legal status in the United States.
Other factors that may influence the decision to remove a token include indications of fraud or unethical conduct related to the token in question.
“In a rapidly changing industry, our digital asset monitoring process is designed to respond to market and regulatory developments,” Binance US said in a statement. “If a digital asset no longer meets our high standards, or conditions in the industry change, we conduct a more thorough evaluation of the affected asset and determine whether additional action is required (e.g. removal).”
The decision to remove TRX comes three weeks after allegations by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against Tron founder Justin Sun and several celebrities, including Lindsay Lohan, Jake Paul and Akon. They were accused of price manipulation of TRX and BitTorrent (BTT) tokens.
The SEC stated that both TRX and BTT are unregistered securities and that Sun engaged in price manipulation by “creating a scheme to pay celebrities to promote TRX and BTT without disclosing their fees.”
The SEC’s lawsuit specifically targets Sun’s three companies: the Tron Foundation, BitTorrent, and Rainberry. The suit further alleges that Sun made ill-gotten gains of $31 million from the sale of TRX.
Tron (TRX) price drops after announcement
Immediately following the announcement, TRX, the 17th-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, fell to a three-week low of $0.062 before rebounding to $0.063 at the time of writing. This still equates to a 4.7% drop over the day, which is the biggest drop among the top 50 crypto on the market.