Binance CEO to sue The Block for fake Shanghai police raid story

On Nov. 21, crypto industry publication The Block released a story entitled "Binance's Shanghai office shut down following police raid, sources say." The article quickly blew up on Twitter, with some going as far as to suggest that it contributed to the recent collapse of the Bitcoin price, which now sits at $7,250 as of the time of writing this.

Changpeng Zhao, the chief executive of Binance, has recently said that Binance will be suing The Block.

What happened?First pay-walled under The Block's "Daily" subscription, the now-controversial article claimed that "Several sources close to the matter" said that Binance's Shanghai location, "Abruptly closed its doors in recent weeks." The version of the article with the updated headline-which was released to the public, not pay-walled-didn't cite a reason, though the original iteration's headline insinuated that a "Police raid" contributed to the shutdown of the office.

Zhou claimed that there was no raid as there is no Binance Shanghai location; other executives of the firm quickly followed suit, writing that a raid couldn't have taken place on a firm that has decentralized operations.

Due to these rebuttals, The Block quickly came under fire from those that support Binance, which spans the entire crypto food chain-from retail traders to executives of industry funds and other media publications.

In it, Chaparro asserted that his team stands by a majority of the article, citing reports from Caijing.com that indicated the existence of at least two Shanghai offices of Binance's.

On the matter of the existence of a "Police raid," Chaparro said that its sources, which include an anonymous Binance employee who was acting as an eyewitness, claimed that "Officials had visited one of the offices prior to the shutdown." Though, it was admitted that the use of the word "Raid," especially in the headline, was too ambiguous to stay online.

While The Block has taken steps to rectify the situation, Binance isn't satisfied.

CZ announced late Friday night that "We"-seemingly implying Binance as an entity-will be "Suing them."

It isn't clear what Binance will be suing The Block for, though the most likely answer is defamation and libel.