Binance follows Justin Sun’s lead, sues media in China

In another disturbing push for censorship from a major cryptocurrency player, Binance has defeated Bloomberg Businessweek’s China arm in a defamation lawsuit after the media outlet titled an issue from 2022, ‘Changpeng Zhao’s Ponzi Scheme.’ The outlet was quick to change the title to ‘The Mysterious Changpeng Zhao,’ but apparently this near-instant alteration did not matter to Binance or Chinese courts.

The article in question described how Binance marketing works, expressed that CZ and his companions had urged retail to buy memecoins, that Binance contributed to investors getting burned by Terra/Luna, told of a secret Shanghai office, and, lastly, discussed how Binance almost entirely lacked proper compliance teams. Many of these statements have since been or were previously confirmed by numerous media outlets across the globe.

Unfortunately, the win in Chinese court, which resulted in Binance having Bloomberg donate money to children with special needs, has been met with the general populace condemning Bloomberg Businessweek and celebrating the win for Binance. Online commentators have called the article a lie and have complained of unprofessionalism from the Bloomberg Businessweek team.

Read more: How a money launderer allegedly used Deltec, Binance, and Tether

Same playbook, different team

This announcement of a Chinese court win comes on the heels of Justin Sun making a similar announcement a few weeks ago. In that instance, Sun sued a very small media outlet in China and the outlet was ordered to pay the crypto billionaire $69.

While neither Binance nor Justin Sun have been able to take down similar stories reported on them from media outlets worldwide, the move to use defamation lawsuits to silence crypto news outlets in China seems to serve a two-pronged purpose: one in which individuals are fearful to report the truth about cryptocurrency companies in mainland China and, two, can utilize these censorship endorsing, pearl clutching wins as bad PR for the media, which they paint as constantly lying about them.

This tactic seems to work well in China, but thankfully, due to strong laws around freedom of speech, many media outlets outside China face little-to-none of the same headwinds.

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