Binance kept weak money-laundering checks even as it promised tougher compliance
> Binance said documents reviewed by Reuters were “partial and do not accurately reflect the full picture<p>I believe that, having worked with many lawyers over a variety of crypto projects over the last half decade most of the information is with different attorneys under attorney client privilege.<p>They know the law better than the public sector agencies do, spending months on a rationale from a variety of case law, journals, and less binding private opinions from the same regulators. and law firms may even accept liability on behalf of their client.<p>Even if its not “better”, as it is inconvenient for a regulator to disagree with you at any point, it is more expensive for a regulator by orders of magnitude for two reasons:<p>1) The regulator doesnt know how you’re structured or what legal rationale you are relying on. They dont know what exemption or compliance you are relying on. And there are many possibilities, sometimes infinite permutations.<p>2) They dont get to know even because of the attorney client privilege.<p>They cant assume you’re doing something wrong just because Reuters decided to use some negative adjectives for things likely currently legal.<p>Regulators are stuck with a high expense to most likely just embarrass themselves. Its better for them to go after lower hanging fruit.<p>Binance is accurate in that legislatures have not made a specific encompassing law. So regulators are flying blind. Legislatures also dont know what to pass since nobody will talk to them either, the firms most effected dont want anything on the piblic record because then an overzealous regulator will know about any weakness in the company’s regulatory strategy. Legislatures are also at a place where they could neuter the regulator agency, its not a specific anti-crypto future that people think “governments” are heading towards.<p>So literally everyone is flying blind, while the well funded fiat-interfacing crypto service has the most comprehensive view of the law because of their expensive lawyers.