According to the person involved, the freeze came from a local court in Colorado, USA, and was a “related freeze.” He provided proof of the source of funds as customer service requested, but they then said they didn’t have the authority and told him to contact the U.S. court himself. He searched the court’s website but couldn’t find anywhere an ordinary person could submit documents.

First, a question: is the money you have on exchanges now more or less than it was a month ago?

The comments section is split again.

On one side, there’s fear. Some say the most outrageous thing right now is expecting individuals living in mainland China to travel to some faraway place in the U.S., Europe, or the Middle East to file a lawsuit. What ordinary person could manage that? Others say that lately, almost all the cases of funds being frozen have involved courts in Colorado: if you have 100,000 in legitimate funds in your account and accidentally receive 1,000 U, your entire account gets frozen.

On the other side, people are skeptical. Some say they know lots of people who use Binance and have never run into this; the blockchain doesn’t lie, so the deposited funds must have had some kind of issue. Others say they saw two identical comments in the thread and suspect someone was spamming.

Binance has not made any public comment on this matter so far. Today, customer service said in another post: as long as you comply with the User Agreement, Binance will not freeze your account without reason.

A few days ago, He Yi warned people not to transfer discounted U or money that someone asks you to pass through your account to Binance. That warning was about checking where money came from before it enters. This time, people are worried about what happens after it gets in: could one problematic payment drag the entire account down with it?

I think what’s making people anxious is that two things are unclear.

First, how much exposure is enough to count? If you receive a problematic U, will only that amount be frozen, or the entire account? No one can give a definitive answer right now.

Second, where do you go to seek recourse when something goes wrong? Customer service says it has no authority, the court is all the way over in the U.S., and there’s nowhere in between where you can submit documents, get a response, and know the timeframe.

Some people say they’ll just trade on-chain from now on. But U can still be frozen by its issuer on-chain; avoiding exchanges doesn’t mean you can avoid U itself.

Exchanges’ risk controls are starting to look more and more like banks’. What people want now is a channel where they can make their case, like at a bank.

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First published on X: @musinoot