Binance US to Delist TRX and SPELL Amid Heightened Regulatory Pressure in US

Binance US, the American-based subsidiary of the largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, announced that it plans to delist the cryptocurrency assets tron (TRX) and spell (SPELL) on April 18, 2023. 

The company stated that it periodically reviews the assets it lists, and when a "digital asset no longer meets our high standards, or industry circumstances change, we conduct a more in-depth review of the affected asset and assess whether further action is necessary (i.e. delisting)."

Binance US will close deposits for SPELL and TRX on April 17, 2023, the day before delisting, but withdrawals will remain open. Although it is delisting Tron's native asset TRX, Binance US will continue to support USDT's TRC20 version and USDC issued on the Tron network. Following the delisting news, TRX lost 2.8% of its value against the U.S. dollar, while SPELL lost more than 4%.

Spell is associated with the Abracadabra.money project, which issues the stablecoin asset called magic internet money (MIM). The delisting news follows Binance Holdings Ltd. being sued by the CFTC and Tron founder Justin Sun being sued by the SEC. In the SEC lawsuit against Sun, the U.S. regulator insists TRX is an unregistered security, and Sun has also been accused of market manipulation. Moreover, a recent report claimed that people familiar with the matter have said Binance US has been struggling to find a new banking partner.

Binance US states that delisting usually relates to a cryptocurrency asset's changing risk profile, volume and liquidity, the network's resilience to external or internal attacks, and "regulatory standing in the United States." 

The U.S. has been cracking down on cryptocurrency businesses, and on March 9, 2023, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against Kucoin and declared that ethereum (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, was an unregistered security. In the first week of April, the crypto exchange Bittrex announced that it was closing U.S. operations due to regulatory uncertainty.