(Reuters) - Binance and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission have jointly asked a court for a 60-day stay on the regulator's lawsuit against the crypto exchange, citing the potential impact of a newly launched task force.
In a court filing dated Monday, the parties said the task force, formed last month to work on crypto regulations, may "impact and facilitate the potential resolution of this case".
The stay could be an early sign of the SEC's pivot to a more crypto-friendly stance, reflecting President Donald Trump's pledge to make the U.S. a global hub for the industry.
In contrast, former SEC Chair Gary Gensler had termed the industry "the Wild West". Under him, the regulator sued Binance in June 2023, accusing the company and its former CEO Changpeng Zhao of artificially inflating trading volumes, diverting customer funds and misleading investors about its market surveillance controls.
Last year, a federal judge ruled that the majority of the lawsuit could proceed. The regulator is also locked in a dispute with another crypto exchange Coinbase.
"The Commission's handling of crypto has been marked by legal imprecision and commercial impracticality... It took us a long time to get into this mess, and it is going to take us some time to get out of it," SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who is leading the task force, said in a statement earlier this month.
Trump picked crypto-friendly Washington lawyer Paul Atkins as the new chair of the SEC, while prominent Republicans have ramped up efforts to curb what some have called "Operation Chokepoint 2.0" - the alleged denial of financial services to crypto companies.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo)
