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Binance’s Co-founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao speaks during the 2022 Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, on November 1, 2022.

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Binance’s VIP users were granted a set of special privileges, including an early heads-up from the crypto exchange if they were under investigation by law enforcement, according to the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the U.S. and stepped down from his post on Tuesday as part of a $4.3 billion settlement. The plea deal resolves a multi-year investigation into the world’s largest crypto exchange.

Treasury alleged in a 92-page order that Binance had “developed a process to notify VIP users if they became the subject of a law enforcement inquiry,” in a setup where Binance was effectively serving as a lookout for its top-tier customers.

The process, as described by FinCEN, was relatively simple. Members of Binance’s VIP team were instructed to contact the user under investigation by “all available means” including sending texts and calling to inform customers, for example, that their account had been frozen or unfrozen.

According to the consent order, Binance’s VIP team staff were warned not to be too obvious in their tips.

“‘We cannot in any circumstances directly tell the user to run/withdraw, we can get sued or undertake personal liability. Giving a strong hint[,] such as your account is unlocked/your account has been investigated by XXX is usually a good enough hint of severity,'” the company told the VIP team, the order said.

Binance’s “VIP Program” caters to higher volume, commercially important users and offers incentives such as competitive trading fees and higher limits on order volume to try to keep these patrons happy — and loyal.

According to FinCEN, internal reports from Binance indicated that in 2019, VIP customers “consistently accounted for between two-thirds and three-quarters of both trading volume and trading revenue on Binance.com, adding that “Binance thus had significant commercial motivations to go to great lengths to support these VIP users.”

Despite rules forbidding people in the U.S. from trading on the platform, users in the U.S. “represented a crucial element of the VIP userbase,” at some points accounting for as much as 20% of all transaction fees on the exchange.

FinCEN found that Binance helped U.S. customers, including the most commercially lucrative U.S. Enterprise Users in Binance’s VIP program, to circumvent the ringfencing policies the exchange itself had put into place to comply with local laws.

One such approach included encouraging users to alter know-your-customer documentation to give the false impression they were not in the U.S., as well as using a virtual private network, or VPN, to cover a user’s geographic footprint, “even though Binance would know that the user was, in fact, located in the United States.”

“These users were so valuable to Binance that personnel were instructed not to off-board them,” read the FinCEN report.

In Dec. 2020, a member of Binance’s VIP team wrote, “We will not be restricting the top 100 [users] (even after sending them emails [about restrictions applicable to U.S. users who remained on Binance.com]). They will be managed by your [VIP] team. [The CEO’s] idea is that they should have enough time to create or find new non-US entities,” the consent order stated.

FinCEN said that Binance ultimately executed on this plan and took additional steps to conceal its retention of U.S. users.

CNBC’s Christina Wilkie contributed to this report.

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More Cybertruck delays, GM and Hyundai break records, and a new electric classic

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More Cybertruck delays, GM and Hyundai break records, and a new electric classic

On today’s episode of Quick Charge, Tesla is delaying Cybertruck deliveries, 3rd time’s a charm for FSD transfers, EV sales are up all over, big trucks go far, and a classic electric Porsche.

We’ve got lots of Tesla news to get through today – some good, some bad, but all very much “on brand” for the electric carmaker we’ve come to know in recent years. Meanwhile, GM, Hyundai, and Kia and setting EV sales records, America’s big truck companies break ground on a new battery factory, Volvo clocks 50,000,0000 miles on its electric semis, and a classic electric Porsche 911.

Prefer listening to your podcasts? Audio-only versions of Quick Charge are now available on Apple PodcastsSpotifyTuneIn, and our RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded Monday through Thursday (that’s the plan, anyway). We’ll be posting bonus audio content there as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news!

Got news? Let us know!
Drop us a line at tips@electrek.co. You can also rate us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or recommend us in Overcast to help more people discover the show!

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China is building a mammoth 8 GW solar farm

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China is building a mammoth 8 GW solar farm

State-owned power company China Three Gorges Renewables Group will build an 8 GW solar farm as part of a nearly $11 billion integrated energy project.

To put the sheer size of the 8 GW solar farm in perspective, the three largest solar farms in the world by capacity are China’s Ningxia Tenggeli and Golmud Wutumeiren solar farms, with a capacity of 3 MW each, and a 3.5-GW solar farm outside Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. 

In addition to the massive solar farm, the $10.99 billion project will also consist of 4 GW of wind, 5 GWh of energy storage capacity, 200 MW of solar thermal, and (disappointingly) 4 GW of coal-fired power. It will be sited in Ordos, in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region, the Shanghai-listed company said in a stock filing.

China Three Gorges says that the enormous integrated energy site’s power will be dispatched to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei cluster in northern China via an ultra-high voltage power transmission line.

The project will break ground in September and is expected to come online by June 2027.

China Three Gorges Renewables will take a 56% stake, and Inner Mongolia Energy Group will control 44%.

Read more: In a world first, China installs an 18 MW offshore wind turbine


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Hispano Suiza will do a hill climb and show off its new 1,114 hp Carmen Sagrera at Goodwood

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Hispano Suiza will do a hill climb and show off its new 1,114 hp Carmen Sagrera at Goodwood

Boutique electric hypercar developer Hispano Suiza announced it would return to the Goodwood Festival of Speed this month to showcase two of its latest vehicles. One on display will be its newest model, the Carmen Sagrera, which packs four motors that combine for 1,114 horsepower.

Hispano Suiza is a boutique automaker in Spain with well over a century of experience. Founded in 1904, the brand established a prominent reputation by producing luxury cars, aircraft engines, trucks, and weapons throughout the early to mid-1900s.

The brand has been revived in recent years with a keen focus on all-electric hypercars that deliver one-of-a-kind performance. Hispano Suiza’s venture into bespoke BEVs began in 2019 with the debut of the Carmen – a truly unique model of which only 24 examples were assembled, and no two are exactly alike.

As an encore, Hispano Suiza launched the even more exclusive Carmen Boulogne. Only five were built, and one was delivered to a customer in the US in 2023. It currently sits as one of the most expensive BEVs on the planet.

To complete the trifecta, Hispano Suiza teased a third hypercar called the Carmen Sagrera this past February as a driveable nod to its 120-year history in automotive design.

We only caught a glimpse of its massive spoiler at the time but got the full picture in June when the Spanish automaker officially debuted it to the public in Barcelona. Later this month, Hispano Suiza intends to debut the Carmen Sagrera in the UK for the first time during the annual Goodwood Festival of speed.

It is there that it also intends to do a famous hill climb in another one of its all-electric hypercars.

Hispano Suiza to compete (and show off) at Goodwood

According to news from Hispano Suiza today, it will return to the Goodwood Festival of Speed and bring along not one but two all-electric hypercars. The first will be the previously mentioned Carmen Sagrera, which will be presented to the media and authorities in the UK for the first time, including The Duke of Richmond, who founded the annual Goodwood event.

The new all-electric hypercar, piloted by former Formula 1 driver Luis Pérez-Sala, will pull out onto the stage of Hispano Suiza’s dedicated stand. The public will be able to see it up close and take advantage of a pre-sale of Hispano Suiza’s new Capsule Collection of branded merchandise.

Those hoping to see the Carmen Sagrera in action as Goodwood may be disappointed, as it will only be on display. However, the automaker shared that it intends to do a hill climb with Carmen Boulogne, which is a nice consolation.

This year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed will occur July 11-14. If you’re there, be sure to check out the new Carmen Sagrera in person and report back.

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