In the wake of both Coincheck’s hack–as well as a big one that hit the South Korean exchange Coinrail–governments in East Asia began to crack down. Over the course of a few months, China, Japan, and South Korea all announced different measures to better regulate crypto-trading. The world was watching to see if this new technology would hit the mainstream–and government crackdowns following gigantic hacks helped poison the public perception.
The company has grown to become one of the biggest names in crypto by allowing anyone to use its service to trade myriad tokens, many of which are unavailable or limited on other exchanges. But over the past year, Binance has matured and begun to offer more formalized services. Following fiat currency exchange launches in the U.K., Uganda and Singapore, Binance is opening a dedicated U.S. exchange to avoid uncertainty around its legality.

Another property of Safemoon which has attracted wide criticism is the ownership pattern of the current supply of the token. A large proportion of Safemoon’s total liquidity is owned by members of the founding team. Although these funds are in a so-called lock-up, such concentration of ownership is often a cause for serious concern in the crypto space. In part, this concern is because of the influence that major holders—called whales—have over price movements when they sell.
The inability to get SEC approval really held back bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. It sent the message, says Innes, “that there wasn’t underlying support from Wall Street.” Meanwhile, the price dropped from around $10,000 to $6,000.