Binance Did $90bn in China Trades in Month Despite Ban

Binance users traded crypto assets worth $90 billion in a single month in China, despite a ban imposed on such trading in 2021, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.

China is Binance’s biggest market by far, said The Journal, which cited internal figures, plus current and former employees of the exchange.

China allegedly accounts for 20% of the company’s worldwide volume, excluding trades made by a subset of very large traders, according to the report published on Tuesday. It did not specify the month in which those 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.

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“The Binance.com website is blocked in China and is not accessible to China-based users,” a spokesperson for the exchange said when contacted for comment on the report.

The exchange has also been under the scrutiny of US regulators including 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 US customers from its platform and misled investors about its market surveillance controls.

The exchange is also under investigation by the US Justice Department over possible money-laundering and sanctions violations, according to reports in December.