Crypto crackdown makes US operation difficult, says Binance

BINANCE, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchange, has attacked the US administration’s crackdown on the industry and said it hopes to gain regulatory approval in the UK.

Patrick Hillmann, the company’s chief strategy officer, said it was a “very difficult time” to do business in the US and that the situation had been “very confusing over the past six months”.

Meanwhile, he said the company would do “everything we possibly can” to secure approval in the UK.

US regulators have taken on cryptocurrency companies, including Binance and Coinbase, amid a market collapse in which FTX, one of the world’s biggest online exchanges, went bankrupt.

Last month Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s chief executive, suggested he could relocate the company out of the US, with the UK as an option. Mr Hillmann told the crypto and digital assets summit of the Financial Times that there had been a wide “regulatory pivot … in the US”.

He predicted that American authorities would have to reverse course if investment shifts to Europe after the introduction of the EU’S worldleading Markets in Cryptoassets (Mica) rules. He said: “I expect at some point the US is going to want to pivot and play catch-up to Europe, which just passed Mica, which is a huge step forward.”

Referring to actions taken by the

Securities and Exchange Commission, which has threatened to sue rival Coinbase, Mr Hillmann said the US “right now is in this weird place”.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has sued Binance and its chief executive Changpeng Zhao, saying the exchange has been operating illegally in the country.

The company is also under investigation from the US Justice Department.

Binance has been seeking to restore its relationship with regulators in the UK after the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) banned a subsidiary of the company from operating in the UK.

Binance allows UK customers to buy and sell cryptocurrency, but is not regulated in Britain.

It was recently dropped by its payments partner Paysafe, which said the regulatory environment was “too challenging”.

‘I expect at some point the US is going to want to pivot and catch up with Europe, which just passed Mica’