WASHINGTON The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday requested a federal court put in place a temporary restraining order to freeze the U.S. assets of cryptocurrency exchange Binance.

The motion, in a filing to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, comes a day after U.S. regulators sued Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao for allegedly operating a "web of deception," piling further pressure on the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh; editing by Tim Ahmann)