The U.S. arm of the largest crypto exchange by trading volume Binance has pulled out of the deal to acquire the crypto assets belonging to the defunct crypto lending platform Voyager Digital.
In a Tuesday tweet, Binance.US announced its withdrawal from the deal to buy Voyager’s crypto assets including 3.4 billion SHIB tokens worth about $33.3 million at the time of writing. According to the exchange, the ‘difficult decision’ became necessary following the ‘hostile and uncertain regulatory climate in the U.S.”
Recall that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) led by Gary Gensler has launched attacks on several U.S.-based crypto companies including Kraken, Ripple, Paxos and Coinbase. Amid calls from crypto companies for clear rules, the securities agency seeks to achieve crypto regulation by enforcement.
The update said, “Binance.US 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 in the United States has introduced an unpredictable operating environment impacting the entire American business community. We are focused on creating a safe platform where our customers can participate in the digital asset economy.”
Implication for SHIB Price
Voyager, a once-thriving crypto lending platform was among the companies to face liquidity crunches following the historic collapse of the Terra ecosystem in May. This led to the now-defunct company filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2022 and slowly selling off its holdings to offset debts to customers and other creditors.
Among the crypto assets Voyager has been heavily dumping in the market since February 2023 are Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Ether (ETH) in a bid to raise funds. In February, the bankrupt crypto lender moved 270 billion to top crypto exchanges. As published, Voyager Digital also moved a whopping 300 billion and 270 billion Shiba Inu tokens to Coinbase in March 2023 in separate transactions.
To help Voyager’s customers access their crypto in kind, Binance.US proposed a $1 billion deal to acquire the bankrupt company’s assets including its remaining 3.4 billion SHIB. As a result, the top crypto firm paused its frequent SHIB sell-offs.
However, given Binance.US’ withdrawal from the acquisition deal, Voyager Digital could be forced to resume dumping its crypto holdings including the 3.4 billion SHIB on its balance sheet. Should this be the case, would there be any negative impact on SHIB price?
Whether the top firm would or would not dump its remaining SHIB assets is only a matter of time. Regarding the price action of Shiba Inu in the short term, we can only watch to see how things unfold. But in the last 7 days, the second-largest decentralized token has been down almost 6%.
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