Key takeaways:
- CZ has refuted the allegations and shared a picture of the allegedly fake Red Notice.
- Red Notice is an order to law enforcement agencies worldwide to find and temporarily detain a suspect awaiting extradition, surrender, or other legal action.
As information spread that the CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange was being sought out for detention by foreign law enforcement, Binance’s BNB token and bitcoin (BTC) both fell sharply on Monday.
It comes out that an encrypted message in a tweet that was evidently not intended for public viewing, at least not yet, served as the impetus for everything. However, that may have just been a wild assumption.
Red Notice is an order to law enforcement agencies worldwide to find and temporarily detain a suspect awaiting extradition, surrender, or other legal action.
The crypto community’s popular user @cobie, who has a large following, tweeted, “Interpol Red Notice for CZ.” The message’s text was indeed a jumble of letters and numbers. The same encryption used to protect numerous cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, had been used to encrypt it: the SHA-256 hash function.
Cobie’s Twitter account is presently protected, so any additional remarks he may have made about the situation are only known to followers who have been approved.
Twitter user Hyuktrades, who initially stated he would withdraw money from Binance in reaction to the incident, spread the rumor more widely. Since then, he has remained silent on the subject. Despite the lack of publicly available information, it’s conceivable that Zhao is the subject of a Red Notice being privately distributed by police.
Despite the allegations, CZ has come forward on Twitter to refute them and state that they are wholly false. He even posted a picture of the purported Red Notice while alleging that it was altered.
The significance of a Red Notice is also downplayed on the Interpol website. If such a notice has been issued, it will not serve as a global arrest warrant or compel the government making the arrest to take action against Zhao. Instead, it would serve as a request to find Zhao, place him under temporary arrest, and deliver him to the nation that made the notice request.
The CFTC accused Zhao and associated parties of running an illegal exchange and of violating regulatory requirements on March 27. Any potential Red Notice relating to this development would presumably only serve to strengthen accusations that have already been brought. It is unknown if Zhao is the subject of active legal proceedings in any other nation.
