

A Freedom of Information Act request sent by CoinDesk to the SEC about a “subpoena sent to Binance by the SEC with regards to an investigation into the BNB token” came back with no responsive documents.
“Based on the information you provided in your letter, we conducted a thorough search of the SEC’s various systems of records, but did not locate or identify any information responsive to your request,” an SEC FOIA officer wrote in the commission’s response.
This suggests there was no legally binding subpoena that would compel the exchange to produce documents and make personnel available for questioning.

Bloomberg reported in June that “investigators are examining if the 2017 initial coin offering [of BNB] amounted to the sale of a security that should have been registered with the agency.”
At CoinDesk’s Consensus 2022 event in June, Zhao said that Binance is in regular contact with authorities about its products and denied that the company had been subpoenaed.
Zhao has been a frequent critic of the media, sometimes equating reporting to playing a game of “telephone.” He has said publicly that he’d no longer give interviews to news outlets that use “clickbait titles.”
BNB is Binance’s exchange token, meaning holders get a discount on Binance’s trading fees, and the utility token behind the Binance (BNB) chain — which has a market cap of $471 million and is home to a variety of DeFi projects.
While BNB does not confer equity in Binance, its value fluctuates with the perceived success or failures of Binance on the market.