Binance US announced in a blog post that its efforts to launch a cryptocurrency exchange in the country are proceeding rapidly, but LSK seems to not be in the new listings. Here there are some considerations from LiskHQ in relation to this event.

In June Binance announced that it will stop serving US individual and corporate customers on Binance.com in September, but thanks to the partnership with BAM Trading Services Inc. it is preparing to launch customized trading services for users in the United States.

Binance US has adopted a Digital Asset Risk Assessment Framework to help select bona fide blockchain projects with a real chance of making the world more efficient, to provide transparency in their listing standards, and to ensure Binance US’s compliance with applicable legal requirements.

This framework examines five main areas of each candidate crypto:

compliance with applicable legal requirements, including US AML/CFT and securities laws and their implementing regulations; strategy of the core team to solve a real problem that affects the world; relationship between core team and community members; quantitative analysis of market supply and demand; security of the technology and feasibility of the project. In the announcement they released that the following digital assets are being evaluated under this framework for listing on the Binance US marketplace:

Lisk community was upset to not see there its coins, so questions arose about the relationship between US exchanges and LiskHQ.

Max Kordek, President at Lisk Foundation, stated in Discord chat: We have analysed what would be necessary for us to get more clarity in the American markets last year. It would be required to get a legal opinion from a US law firm which potentially works together with the SEC to get further clarity themselves. The costs for that are estimated around 20-40k USD with no guarantee of the outcome. With the newly adopted BD department in operation since 1.5 weeks I will for sure pick this topic up again (I’m certain it’s on Matthias’ and Jacob’s mind anyways). It’s important for us to make the LSK token as accessible as possible in the biggest markets to gain a bigger user-group who can enjoy our future blockchain application platform. More users means more apps means more utility in our network. So it’s definitely on our list to make sure we are getting on major exchanges for this reason. We are working towards our refined consensus algorithm with high pressure (currently in research phase) and in my opinion it would be better to analyse our network with the new consensus algorithm already in mind, instead of doing a second legal opinion for a lot of money at a later point again. My time line to raise the need for a US legal opinion with the Lisk FC board is around the end of the year.

In addition he stated that LiskHQ was discussing if partner up with Messari, a distributed crypto data library that helps researchers, investors and regulators, because they are based in the US. As a further option, the chance to attend Consensus is also taken into account, as a form of promotion of LSK in the US.

Max confirmed that dealing with US exchanges is much more complex than those options and, even if there are really interested in exchange listing, they have to be very careful about that.

As the last statement, Max announced that the promised blog post about Lisk finances is ready to go, they are waiting for the confirmation from lawyers and he will arrange a call for this week to get more clarity.