The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance has entered into an agreement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to make sure that US customer assets remain in the country.

The SEC earlier this month launched a lawsuit against Binance and its CEO and founder Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao. It alleges that the company artificially inflated its trading volumes, diverted customer funds, failed to restrict US customers from its platform and misled investors on its market surveillance controls.

The agreement, struck on Friday, still requires the approval of the federal judge overseeing the case. It will only allow the employees of Binance.US, the company’s US business, to access assets in the country.

The agreement does nor resolve the SEC lawsuit, but will see Binance.US take steps to ensure that no Binance Holdings officials have access to private keys for its various wallets, hardware wallets or root access to Binance.US's Amazon Web Services tools. Under additional provisions in the proposed agreement, Binance.US will create new crypto wallets which its global exchange employees have no access to, while also providing additional information to the SEC.

In a statement published Saturday, Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the SEC’s division of enforcement, said: “Given that Changpeng Zhao and Binance have control of the platforms’ customers’ assets and have been able to commingle customer assets or divert customer assets as they please, as we have alleged, these prohibitions are essential to protecting investor assets.

“Further, we ensured that US customers will be able to withdraw their assets from the platform while we work to resolve the alleged underlying misconduct and hold Zhao and the Binance entities accountable for their alleged securities law violations.”

A spokesperson for Binance added: "Although we maintain that the SEC's request for emergency relief was entirely unwarranted, we are pleased that the disagreement over this request was resolved on mutually acceptable terms. User funds have been and always will be safe and secure on all Binance-affiliated platforms."

Elsewhere, Binance has issued a cease and desist order to Binance Nigeria Limited, a company which CZ called a "scammer entity" in a tweet on Sunday. The company had previously confirmed to multiple outlets that it has no association with Binance Nigeria Limited.

Regulators in Nigeria earlier this month ordered the business to stop operating, and argued that it courted investors through an unregistered and unregulated website.

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