Twenty percent (20%) of global Binance trading made in China–where crypto is illegal – WSJ report

In a report by the Wall Street Journal, 90 billion USD worth of crypto assets in Binance were treated in China in a single month; while crypto has been banned in the Mainland, Beijing has allowed crypto to take a foothold in Hong Kong; crypto faces a global regulatory crackdown, especially in the United States.

Original story from Reuters with reports by Juby Babu in Bengaluru, Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee

Binance users traded $90 billion of cryptocurrency related assets in a single month in China, where cryptocurrency trading has been illegal since 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday citing internal figures and current and former employees of the exchange.

The transactions made China Binance’s biggest market by far, accounting for 20% of volume worldwide, excluding trades made by a subset of very large traders, the WSJ said. The newspaper did not specify the month during which the transactions were made.

Binance’s origins lie in China, though the world’s largest crypto exchange withdrew from mainland China in 2017 during a regulatory crackdown. It did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for a comment on the Journal report.

“The Binance.com website is blocked in China and is not accessible to China-based users,” a company spokesman told the WSJ.

The exchange has also been under the scrutiny of U.S. regulators like the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The CFTC sued Binance for operating what it said were an “illegal” exchange and a “sham” compliance program, while the SEC sued Binance and CEO Changpeng Zhao saying that Binance artificially inflated its trading volumes, diverted customer funds, failed to restrict U.S. customers from its platform and misled investors about its market surveillance controls.

While crypto has been banned in the Mainland, Beijing has allowed crypto to take a foothold in Hong Kong, one of its special administrative regions (SAR).

Hong Kong recently introduced its own crypto legislation allowing retail investors to invest directly in crypto assets and presenting itself as keenly pro-crypto.

Since then, the country has continued to support the industry. In January, as the crypto industry was reeling from the FTX crisis, the financial secretary said that local government and regulators are looking forward to building a crypto and fintech ecosystem in 2023.

Binance is also under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department over possible money-laundering and sanctions violations, Reuters has reported.

Read the original story on Reuters and learn more about Binance;s views on the matter.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/binance-did-monthly-transactions-worth-90-bln-banned-china-market-wsj-2023-08-02/