Binance Leaves the Old Continent, Setting Up In Japan And Middle East

Binance has exited multiple European countries despite its stated intentions to focus on compliance with MiCA regulations. Meanwhile, the company became the first to obtain an operational license for providing exchange services in Dubai and re-entered the Japanese market with a licensed entity.

Sasha Markevich

Aug 02, 2023 - 2 min read

Recently Binance’s bid to acquire the license that would allow the exchange to advertise in Germany, was reportedly rejected by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin). It is unclear if the company got an official rejection or not yet. The exchange said that they cannot share details, but they “continue to work to comply with BaFin‘s requirements.”

The exchange has previously exited the U.K. and Cyprus. In June Binance had to leave the Dutch market as the exchange didn’t manage to acquire a VASP registration in the Netherlands. These setbacks add to the exchange’s regulatory troubles in the U.S., France and Australia .

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One of Binance’s rivals, Crypto․com, has on the contrary been recently approved for registration as a crypto service provider in the Netherlands. The company also has license in France, Spain, Cyprus, the U.K., South Korea and more.

Binance still has registrations in some other EU countries, including France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Sweden and Lithuania. Earlier CZ tweeted that the European market provides great opportunities and that the company is going to focus on becoming compliant with MiCA regulations, but currently Binance seems to have too many “compliance” troubles in Europe.

But when it dies out in one place it has a tendency to spring up in another. Binance Japan went live yesterday, after Binance completed the rebranding of locally licensed cryptocurrency exchange SAKURA Exchange BitCoin that it acquired in November last year. The local exchange was acquired after Binance was warned by Japanese authorities for operating without a license.

Earlier this week Binance announced that it had obtained an Operational MVP (minimum viable product) License to provide virtual asset exchange and broker-dealer services in Dubai. Dubai is popular among crypto exchanges with its recently established Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA) streamlining licensing and regulatory issues.

This April Crypto.com announced that it had obtained VARA's MVP preparatory license. In May Coinbase also expressed interest in getting the license and even suggested that the UAE could serve as an international crypto hub for the exchange. According to the VARA public register, OKX and Bybit are also among the exchanges which have applied for the license.

Binance is paving the way for its customers despite numerous obstacles set by authorities in different countries. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the crypto exchange had done over $90 billion worth of crypto spot and futures trading in China in May, despite the crypto ban in the country. Whether it will be allowed to transform and become part of the global financial system or instead will continue to jump between jurisdictions, remains to be Observed.