Before the significant SEC raid against cryptocurrency exchange Binance on June 5, some traders apparently placed well-timed sell orders for BNB tokens.In the hours before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Binance, the BNB/USDT order book on Binance experienced a spike in aggregated sell orders of around 125,000 BNB worth $37 million during 11:45 p.m. UTC on June 4 and 1:45 a.m. UTC on June 5.
According to Coinalyze, BNB’s open interest, or the total amount of outstanding derivative contracts held by investors, also climbed in the first nine hours of June 5 by approximately $30 million. This occurred also before the 11:15 am news of the SEC’s alleged violations.
An increase in open interest shows that more traders are entering the market and opening new positions rather than liquidating existing ones.In the hour following the SEC’s attack on Binance on Monday, the price of BNB, the native token for the Binance ecosystem that the SEC claims is a security, fell more than 9% from $300 to $272.
Following the disclosure of the SEC’s lawsuit against Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, crypto traders who bet that the price of Binance’s BNB token would fall before June 5 at 11:15 am have benefited greatly from the price action of BNB.
Requests for comment on the transactions made prior to the SEC filing lawsuits against the cryptocurrency exchange were not answered by an SEC representative.