He also worked at OKCoin as CTO for less than a year, a platform for spot trading between fiat and digital assets. Binance Holdings Ltd., branded Binance, is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies. On 12 September 2023, Binance.US announced the resignation of CEO Brian Shroder and a reduction of the exchange’s workforce by around 100 positions, roughly one-third of its total staff. Arkham Intelligence provided data in January 2023 that identified “an alleged nexus of money laundering” from a much smaller exchange called Bitzlato through intermediate wallets of Binance.
- France is the first European country to give Binance regulatory approval.
- In January 2021, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority began requiring firms dealing with cryptoassets to register in order to comply with anti-money laundering rules.
- In November 2019, Binance announced it was acquiring Indian bitcoin exchange WazirX, which became disputed in August 2022 when Binance founder Zhao claimed the deal was never signed.
- On 21 February 2020, the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) issued a public statement responding to media reports referring to Binance as a Malta-based cryptocurrency company.
- In August 2025, Wall Street Journal found that Binance was quietly administering a trading platform for the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial.
Japan
In June 2023, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced that Binance was under preliminary investigation for illegal canvassing of clients and money-laundering. In May 2024, FINTRAC announced that it had imposed a $4.32 million fine on Binance for violating Canadian money laundering and terrorist financing laws. In May 2023, Binance announced it would withdraw from the Canadian market due to the introduction of stricter rules in the country.
Nigeria
Binance was initially based in China, then moved to Japan shortly before the Chinese government restricted cryptocurrency companies. In April 2024, Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison after pleading guilty to violating US money laundering laws. On 21 November 2023, Binance pled guilty to federal charges, of money laundering, unlicensed money transmitting, and sanctions violations.
2019: launch of stablecoin and security breach
Months later, a similar memorandum was signed with the Malta Stock Exchange to develop a platform for trading security tokens. In August 2025, Wall Street Journal found that Binance was quietly administering a trading platform for the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial. In 2021, Binance was put under investigation by both the United States Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service on allegations of money laundering and tax offenses. Binance has been the subject of lawsuits and challenges from regulatory authorities throughout its history, in particular over its involvement in money laundering.
Tokens
As a result, Binance has been banned from operating or ordered to cease operations in some countries, and has been issued fines. According to data from blockchain analytics company Arkham Intelligence, Binance is the largest crypto-holding entity in the world with over $200 billion in digital assets. Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, a developer who had previously created high-frequency trading software.
BEP-20 Token Standard
In a formal statement issued on September 1, 2023, Binance announced it would discontinue support for BUSD. On March 12, 2025, it was announced that the Abu Dhabi government-backed investment fund MGX Fund Management Limited had made a minority $2 billion investment in Binance. Other defendants include former White House communications officer Anthony Scaramucci, digital-asset exchange Crypto.com and political groups such as the Mark Zuckerberg-founded FWD.US.
Japan
- In October 2024, Gambaryan was released after the Nigerian government dropped charges against him.
- The company was founded in 2017 in China but moved its servers and headquarters out of the country in advance of the Chinese government’s ban on cryptocurrency trading in September 2017.
- In July 2018, Binance acquired Trust Wallet, a decentralized cryptocurrency wallet for an undisclosed sum composed of a mixture of cash, Binance stock, and BNB tokens.
- According to a 2024 report in The Wall Street Journal covering 2023, Binance fired several members of its internal investigation team who were tasked with investigating market manipulation such as pump and dump schemes and wash trading.
- In March 2018, Binance announced its intentions to open an office in Malta after stricter regulations in Japan and China.
The New York Department of Financial Services issued an order to Paxos to stop minting new BUSD tokens in February 2023. In 2022, BUSD became the third largest stablecoin by market capitalization, following Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC). Binance USD (BUSD) was a US dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Paxos on the behalf of Binance.
On 28 February 2024, two Binance executives, Nadeem Anjarwalla and Tigran Gambaryan, were detained by Nigeria’s government on allegations of illegal operations and forex manipulation. It issued a declaration stating that Binance Nigeria Limited, a subsidiary of Binance, was operating unlawfully in the country. The fine was issued to the company after an official warning was issued to the company during August 2021. In June 2024, Binance was imposed with a fine of US$2.25 million by the Financial Intelligence Unit, for operating in India in violation of local anti-money laundering regulations.
On 13 June 2022, Binance announced that for an unspecified period of time users would not be unable to withdraw their funds held in bitcoin, as the value Binance cryptocurrency exchange of cryptocurrencies suffered serious declines. On 27 May 2022, Binance announced the registration of its legal entity in Italy and plans to open offices in the country. Binance accounts of Russian users were able to transfer to the new platform until March 2024. In March 2023, the exchange banned Russian residents from buying euros and dollars through its p2p service. In June, Reuters found that Binance had acted as a conduit for the laundering of at least $2.35 billion from hacks, $780 million laundered from the Russian darknet market Hydra, and €800 million from investment scams.
In 2013, he joined Blockchain.info as the third member of the cryptocurrency wallet’s team. CEO Changpeng Zhao founded Fusion Systems in 2005 in Shanghai; the company built high-frequency trading systems for stockbrokers. Investigative journalists have uncovered how Binance continues to profit from money laundering for organized crime groups. In October 2025, President Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao who had been convicted for enabling money laundering on Binance. In November 2023, the company pleaded guilty in a US federal court to money laundering, unlicensed money transmitting, and sanctions violations. That same year, Binance shared client data, including names and addresses, with the Russian government.
In January 2021, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority began requiring firms dealing with cryptoassets to register in order to comply with anti-money laundering rules. Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission filed a criminal complaint against Binance on 2 July 2021, “for commission of offence under the Emergency Decree on Digital Asset Business B.E. 2561 (2018)”. Additionally, the SEC has collaborated with major tech companies like Google and Meta to halt Binance’s digital advertising efforts targeting Filipino users, although the Binance app remains available for download on mainstream app stores.
Tokens
In April 2021, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority in Germany warned that the company risked fines for not releasing an investor prospectus for the stock tokens it has issued. France is the first European country to give Binance regulatory approval. On 17 March 2022, Binance has confirmed in an undertaking to the Ontario Securities Commission that it would stop opening new accounts and halting trading in existing accounts for users in Ontario.
In 2019, the company announced Binance Jersey, a Jersey-based exchange which offers fiat-to-cryptocurrency pairs, including the Euro and the British pound. In January 2018 it was the largest cryptocurrency exchange with a market capitalization of $1.3 billion, a title it had retained as late as April 2021, despite competition from Coinbase, among others. The company was founded in 2017 in China but moved its servers and headquarters out of the country in advance of the Chinese government’s ban on cryptocurrency trading in September 2017.
The acquisition allowed Binance to re-enter the Japanese cryptocurrency market. Binance backed out of the deal the next day citing concerns about FTX’s business practices and investigations by US financial regulators. On 8 November 2022, Binance offered to buy rival cryptocurrency exchange FTX’s non-US operations (FTX.com) to help cover the latter’s liquidity crunch. In September 2023, Binance announced it was leaving Russia and selling its business to the CommEX platform, which had been launched the previous week.
By 2021, BNB had the third highest market capitalization among cryptocurrencies. It was originally called Binance Coin when it was launched in July 2017, for users to pay fees on the company’s platform. According to a 2024 study by John Griffin, a finance professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Binance is the most popular exchange used in pig butchering scams.
