It was only last week that it looked like this saga was finally going to end. After FTX won the first time around it wasn't long before they then imploded in spectacular fashion. As expected BINANCE was there to scoop up the Voyager assets via their Binance.US company. Then as soon as we heard about that sale we heard government regulators were trying to stop the purchase of Voyager by Binance.US and targeted Binance's lack of transparency as the main reason. Like I mentioned though last week the government and regulators had dropped their objections and everything seemed to be moving in the right direction.
Today though Voyager dropped the absolute bomb out of left field that Binance.US had sent them a letter terminating the purchase and pointing to the purchase not being closed by April 18th as the reason why. Yes if that was the deadline then obviously it was missed but typically when the tie-up is due to getting government clearance these types of deadlines are not used against the company being acquired. Oddly enough before the news broke there had been an article on CNBC's headline about the CFTC commissioner (Commodity Future Trading Commission commissioner) talking to Binance after suing them in March but admitted at the moment that there was no clear path forward.
This is significant news and I think gives us a lot of insight into why Binance.US pulled the plug. They have realized that the government is going to continue to go after them and they are gearing up for a fight. Anytime someone takes on the government it costs a pretty penny but when you also consider the sheer size and scope of the investigations and the number of people that Binance and Binance.US will need to adequately fight this fight you realize how spending $1 billion might not be the best use of the money when your very existence is in threat. Just ask Ripple if you are wondering how bad it can get as that company is effectively frozen still after years and years of fighting the SEC.
Just like FTX.US Binance.US was known to have the same loophole to access the main platform that .US users from both companies were supposed to not be able to have. Since this issue is pretty widely known to have existed it would not surprise me if Binance.US is looking to have to cover themselves from the fines they are likely to run into. Not to mention how Binance itself while independent has also been looped into a lot of these investigations because it has become more and more apparent that Binance.US did not have the independence that it claimed it had from Binance. At the end of the day even though CZ claimed differently he was the ultimate person that decided how things would go.
Sadly for Voyager users, they are back to square one with COINBASE for instance likely out of the running. Given the regulator climate, it is hard to imagine who would buy them right now because they would need assurances from US regulators that they would not get fined to kingdom come after getting purchased. I honestly cannot imagine any of the centralized exchanges buying them as Kraken, Gemini, and Coinbase are all looking to grow outside the US until the US figures itself out. I guess a private equity or some massive crypto fund or funds could come together and purchase it but again they will need assurances that I just do not know if the government is willing to provide.
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