The cryptocurrency industry has been facing increased scrutiny from US watchdogs in recent days, with the SEC halting Kraken’s staking services and the New York Department of Financial Services ordering Paxos to stop issuing BUSD. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao spoke about the situation in a Twitter AMA, suggesting that the industry needs a more diversified selection of stablecoins, including those pegged to other fiat currencies like the Singaporean dollar and the Japanese yen. He also mentioned that an issuer of a yen-based stablecoin had already contacted the world’s largest exchange.
Zhao attributed the increased regulatory pressure to the crashes of Terra and FTX in 2022, which he said had changed everything. He explained that watchdogs had become more “stringent” and traditional finance companies and banks no longer wanted to cooperate with participants from the digital asset industry. He also revealed that Binance had lost some traditional banking partners, likely referring to the drama with Signature Bank.
