Binance.US appoints former New York Fed official to board of directors

Binance.US disclosed on Tuesday that it has appointed Martin Grant, a former U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of New York official who led compliance and ethics working at the institution for 17 years, to its board of directors.

Martin Grant joins Binance.US board

Grant, the global corporate head of regulatory affairs at JST Digital, takes on his post following Changpeng Zhao, the founder and former chief of Binance exchange globally, stepping down. He spent more than three decades in legal and compliant-focused positions, which he had held with U.S. government agencies, primarily at the New York Fed.

According to Grant,

“the American digital asset industry is at an inflection point, and I am excited to help guide the future of one of the country’s most influential and customer-centric crypto platforms.”

Compliance and regulation

The exchange is now under scrutiny by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in court. The federal regulator insists on crypto-driven trading platforms in the country, which must abide by relevant national securities exchange laws. 

The SEC filed a suit against Binance.US. (also including Coinbase and Kraken, among others) in 2022 alleging unregistered brokerage, exchange, and clearing houses operations that a federal court judge deemed plausible in the Coinbase case. 

Binance.US CEO Norman Reed, who was a senior enforcement counsel through the New York Fed from 1993 to 2000, noted that the SEC did not provide very clear guidance to the markets about which digital assets were securities or not. In addition, they relied on this Howey case about an orange grove that was decided in 1946 under very different factual circumstances and very different legal circumstances.