Crypto trading has been illegal in mainland China since 2021, but Binance users in the country have traded $90 billion worth of cryptocurrency-related assets in a single month, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing internal figures and current and former Binance employees.
This would make China Binance’s biggest market by far, accounting for 20% of worldwide volume, the Wall Street Journal said. When Reuters asked Binance for comment, a spokesperson said the Binance.com website is blocked in China and not accessible to China-based users. For an explanation of China’s crypto crackdown, click here.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao was born in China before moving to Canada in 1989, when he was 12, and many of the company’s top early associates had either worked or studied in China.
Binance remains under scrutiny from U.S. regulators, including the CFTC and SEC. Reuters reported in December that it’s being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department over possible money-laundering and sanctions violations too.
Last week Binance and Zhao filed a motion to dismiss the CFTC’s complaint from March, which alleged that Binance, Zhao and its former chief compliance officer were operating what the regulator said was an “illegal” exchange and a “sham” compliance program.
Binance argued that the case should be dismissed because it was trying to regulate foreign individuals and corporations that reside and operate outside the United States and said that it had begun restricting potential U.S. users by June 2019.
There are signs that Binance’s approach to expansion is changing: it has withdrawn its application for a crypto licence in Germany, having recently exited the Netherlands after failing to meet registration requirements there. It has previously said it’s focusing on other countries in the European Union.
Meanwhile, there are more calls for FTX-founder Sam Bankman-Fried to be jailed, after he gave the New York Times access to personal writing by his former romantic partner Caroline Ellison, who led the crypto hedge fund Alameda Research and who is expected to testify against him.
Prosecutors said a couple of weeks ago that this amounted to witness tampering and asked on Wednesday last week for a judge to order SBF (as he’s known) to be jailed ahead of his trial in October. The judge tightened the bail conditions, saying that he had “crossed a line” by sharing the writing and said he’d consider jailing him.
Prosecutors reiterated on Friday that SBF should be jailed because he is intimidating witnesses. SBF said prosecutors mischaracterized his intentions and that he wasn’t trying to intimidate Ellison.
In other FTX news, SBF’s campaign finance charge was dropped so the trial can stay focused on what the government considers his main crime: stealing billions of dollars from cryptocurrency customers. Some social media posts are claiming that all charges against him have been dropped, but Reuters Fact Check says that’s not true.
