In a landmark legal settlement, a judge has given the green light for crypto exchange Binance (BNB-USD) to make a staggering $4.3 billion payment as part of a plea agreement. This penalty stands as one of the heftiest criminal fines ever imposed in the United States,according to Bloomberg last month. Additionally, Binance will be under the supervision of a court-appointed monitor for a duration that could extend up to five years.
Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre recently appeared on the Live show to delve into the implications of Binance’s substantial penalty and its potential effects on the cryptocurrency market.
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Video Transcript
JULIA HYMAN: Binance’s $4.3 billion payment has been approved by a judge as part of the plea deal the company and its founder CZ reached last year, making it one of the largest criminal penalties in US history against the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange. Jared Blikre has been watching it and watching the effect on the crypto market. Hey, Jared.
JARED BLIKRE: Hey, Julie. We’ve seen– and I’m watching Binance token right now. We’ve seen– we’ve expected this ruling to come for a while. I don’t know that it’s much of a surprise. Down 1.63% today. You might be surprised to see the runup that it’s had recently with the price of crypto here. Take a look over three months, and the token is up 61%. And it’s interesting.
Now, CZ himself is expected to be sentenced in April of this year. And he may do about 18 months, which is a lot lower than the 10 years he could have been given. But that still remains up in the air. Also, Binance is going to have a court-appointed monitor for up to five years. I don’t believe we know who that is just yet. But Sullivan & Cromwell has been floated as one of the top names.
But let’s check– let’s take a look at what crypto has been doing aside from that. We can see bitcoin down 1% over the last 24 hours. And here is a three-month chart. This is a very bullish-looking chart. Managed to break to the upside here in February after consolidating all the way back to December of last year. And let’s take a look at the five-year chart so we can see the price memory that we still have above. And basically, we’re looking at this in here.
Most of the hard work has been done. But you can see there’s still quite a bit of price memory, up to $60,000. Could be a little bit of a headwind there. You’re going to need some more catalysts. But I think we get to $60,000, it’s a sure bet we get to $70,000. And then you have $100,000 and those much higher targets inside. I’m sure we’ll hear from Cathie Wood and the likes.
Now, I also want to check out spot bitcoin flows and also assets. GBTC, that’s the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, that has by far the most, 23 billion. Then you have the iShares, a BlackRock offering, with over 5 billion. Fidelity’s in there too, ARK, then it drops off. And just taking a look at the dollar amount of flows, which is right here, we can see Grayscale Bitcoin ETF, which did the conversion from its ETN status, that is down $7.4 billion. And then we’ve seen $5.7 billion into IBIT. And Fidelity’s offering received $4.1 billion. Guys.
