The price of Bitcoin was hovering near a two-and-a-half month low on Tuesday after a steep slide sparked by the news that a major U.S. regulator had sued Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange platform.

In a filing, the Securities and Exchange Commission brought forward thirteen civil charges against Binance, including claims that the company had diverted customer funds into a trading entity controlled by Chief Executive Changpeng Zhao. That trading firm had also engaged in manipulative tactics to inflate Binance’s trading volumes, the SEC added.

The SEC complaint also said Binance had been running unregistered exchanges. One section of the document quotes an unnamed Binance chief compliance officer as saying in 2018, “We are operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.”

The allegations were seen as the latest legal blow against the cryptocurrency industry, which has been under the harsh microscope of U.S. authorities since the collapse of Binance peer FTX last year.

For its part, Binance has denied the allegations, saying that user assets on its U.S. platform have never been at risk. But it noted that it is complying with SEC investigators.