Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has said that the crackdown on crypto has made it “very difficult” to do business in the US, and now hopes to be regulated in the UK.
said Patrick Hillman, the company’s chief strategy officer FT’s Crypto and Digital Asset Summit That the US “has been very confused in the last six months”. He pointed to the SEC’s actions against rival exchange Coinbase over alleged securities law violations as an indication of “how the US is in this weird place right now.”
Contrary to his comments that it’s a “very difficult time” to do business in the US, Hillman said Binance will do “everything we can” to be regulated in the UK.
Binance previously clashed with London regulators who said the exchange was unable to regulate it after it failed to provide basic information about its business activity. The group has no fixed headquarters and provides services worldwide.
In 2021 the FCA ordered the firm to cease all regulatory activities in Britain and last year a joint venture partner said the firm had filed a “grossly inaccurate” annual report for one of its UK companies.
Hillman declined to confirm whether the company had reapplied to the Financial Conduct Authority’s registration regime for crypto businesses, which covers companies’ procedures to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing.
Other groups have claimed that UK authorities are overly wary of fintech and crypto companies. This week, the head of payments company Revolt blamed “overcautious” UK regulators for the delay in getting its banking licence.
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Binance has been the target of US regulators cracking down on alleged illegal activity this year.
In March, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued the group, alleging it was operating illegally in the country and broke the law by broadly soliciting US customers. At the time, Binance called the CFTC complaint “unexpected and disappointing”.
The Department of Justice also named Binance as a counterparty to Bitzlato, a crypto exchange whose founder was accused of transmitting millions of illegal crypto funds in violation of US money laundering regulations.
Binance US, the US affiliate of Binance, last month abandoned a proposed $1bn deal for the assets of Voyager Digital, a crypto lender that fell into bankruptcy last year.
Hillman dismissed the threat of US enforcement action on Binance’s business, saying: “I expect that at some point the US Will want to pivot and play catch-up in Europe who just passed Mika. [the EU’s cryptoasset regulation]Which is a big step forward.”
The EU law aims to provide a framework for regulating crypto assets in the bloc, giving consumers and market participants greater certainty.
The Binance enforcement case is one of many brought by US regulators against some of the biggest companies in the crypto industry.
Among them, Nasdaq-listed Coinbase is the focus of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into potential securities law violations. Crypto payments company Ripple is also embroiled in a long-running lawsuit brought by the SEC in 2020 alleging that it violated securities laws.
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