Binance is done playing defense — at least, that’s the message. The crypto giant has been swinging back hard at media outlets, regulators, and anyone else pointing fingers. And honestly? The market seems to be buying it.
It started with the Wall Street Journal. On February 23, 2026, WSJ published what Binance called flat-out false claims about $1 billion in suspicious transfers. Binance didn’t shrug quietly. They filed a defamation lawsuit. CEO Richard Teng went on social media and called the allegations false and defamatory. Bold move for a company under a microscope.
Then came Senator Blumenthal. His February 24 letter challenged Binance over reports from the NYT, Fortune, and WSJ — specifically around Iranian and Russian sanctions exposure. Binance published a formal response on March 6, 2026, defending its compliance program and disputing everything. The core dispute? About 2,000 allegedly Iranian-linked accounts. Binance says those were VPN users caught by their own detection systems. Not Iran. VPNs. Big difference.
Binance says those 2,000 flagged accounts weren’t Iranian. Just VPN users. Big difference — if you believe them.
And the numbers actually back some of this up. Exposure to illicit wallets dropped 97% between January 2024 and July 2025 — from 0.284% to 0.009% of volume. Exposure to major Iranian exchanges fell 97.3% in two years. In 2025 alone, Binance processed over 71,000 law enforcement requests and helped seize $752 million in illicit assets. That’s not nothing.
Two specific cases stand out. Hexa Whale and Blessed Trust — both flagged for terrorist financing links — were offboarded through internal reviews. Not because of media pressure. Not because of court orders. Binance says they did it themselves. Sure, Jan.
Still, the legal headaches aren’t disappearing. An Ontario court is blocking Hong Kong arbitration in a certified class action over securities violations. A federal judge refused arbitration for customer-loss claims in late February. Political tailwinds from a friendlier US regulatory climate post-Trump help, but they don’t erase active litigation. This confident posture also follows a pattern — Binance previously sued Forbes and Bloomberg in 2020 and 2022 respectively, signaling that legal offense has long been part of the playbook. Backing all of this is a compliance team of over 1,500 specialists covering sanctions, counter-terrorism, and financial crime across more than 25 advanced monitoring tools. The platform also conducts continuous AML and KYC checks to maintain regulatory compliance and reinforce user trust across its global operations.
Serving 300 million users with $44 billion in Bitcoin in customer wallets, Binance can afford to act unbothered. Whether that confidence is earned is a whole other question.
