Stocks of crypto companies fell Monday after the U.S. Commodity and Futures Trade Commission (CFTC) sued Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, and CEO Changpeng Zhao.

Coinbase (COIN), the only U.S. publicly traded crypto exchange, fell 9.1% as of 15:25 UTC (11:25 a.m. ET). Shares of bitcoin mining companies Marathon Digital (MARA), Riot Blockchain (RIOT) and Hut 8 Mining (HUT) all slid more than 7%. MicroStrategy (MSTR) – which earlier Monday disclosed the purchase of nearly another 6,500 bitcoin – was down 6.7%.

Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, lost $1,000 to below $27,000. Binance's exchange token, BNB fell 3.3%.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on Monday, the CTFC's lawsuit alleged that Binance knowingly offered unregistered crypto derivatives products in the U.S. contrary to federal law.

The company, said the CFTC, operated a derivatives trading operation in the U.S., offering trades for numerous cryptocurrencies, all of which the CFTC said are commodities. The suit also alleged that Binance, under Zhao’s leadership, directed its employees to spoof their locations through the use of virtual private networks.

Coinbase Binance Equities MSTR CFTC Regulation Lawsuit

Sheldon Reback

Sheldon Reback is CoinDesk's European news editor. Before joining the company, he spent 26 years as an editor at Bloomberg News, where he worked on beats as diverse as stock markets and the retail industry as well as covering the dot-com bubble of 2000-2002. He subsequently managed the Bloomberg Terminal's main news page before becoming the European editor for a global project to produce short, chart-based stories across the newsroom. His previous work as a journalist took him to Hong Kong, where he reported and edited for several technology magazines, and he also has experience in market research and writing computer manuals. Sheldon has an MBA from the London Business School and an industrial chemistry degree from Brunel University. He owns a small amount of ether.