The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday is looking into how Binance's U.S. arm discloses to customers its ties with trading firms Sigma Chain and Merit Peak, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal. Sigma Chain and Merit Peak act as market makers that trade cryptocurrencies on the Binance.US exchange, the WSJ noted. On its website, though, Binance.US doesn’t name which firms might be trading on its exchange. Moreover, the two trading firms appear to be linked with Binance Founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao based on corporate documents from 2019. Former executives told the WSJ that he controlled both firms as of late last year. In the crypto world, bitcoin (BTC-USD +4.5%) rises toward $45K per token, ethereum (ETH-USD +7.3%) jumps past $3.1K and binance coin (BNB-USD +8.1%) drifts higher to $431. Previously, (Nov. 19, 2021) Binance.US expected to get a "couple hundred million in funding."
