Initially, the Binance exchange was based in China but was forced to change the place of registration since regulatory tightening of the cryptocurrency industry by the state authorities posed risks to the exchange. Relations with regulatory authorities is a big difficulty in the Binance operation.
Changpeng said in his interview to Bloomberg in April 2021 that: “perhaps, Binance has more exchange licenses than any other exchange in the world”. Even the Binance US legal entity was established in order to meet the US legislative rules. Binance US successively gets licenses in every state.
Nevertheless, regulation of cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency exchanges is a serious obstacle on the way of the exchange development and it often has faced claims from authorities.
The United States Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service launched an investigation in May 2021 with respect to Binance Holdings Ltd concerning involvement in criminal activity including money laundering and revenue offence.
The Financial Service Agency (FSA) of Japan warned Binance on June 25, 2021, that it worked in the country without permission. The next day, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) of Great Britain prohibited activity of the local Binance Markets Limited subdivision.
Immediately after that, regulatory authorities of three countries (Cayman Islands, Thailand and Singapore) announced inspection of the Binance activity.
Being under pressure from German and US regulatory authorities, the Binance exchange announced in July 2021 that it will stop trading tokenized stocks since they violated the securities legislation.
