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. 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.
- In November 2023, the company pleaded guilty in a US federal court to money laundering, unlicensed money transmitting, and sanctions violations.
- In May 2021, Bloomberg News reported that Binance was under investigation by the United States Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service for money laundering and tax evasion.
- In 2013, he joined Blockchain.info as the third member of the cryptocurrency wallet’s team.
- Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, a developer who had previously created high-frequency trading software.
- On 21 November 2023, Binance pled guilty to federal charges, of money laundering, unlicensed money transmitting, and sanctions violations.
- 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.
2019: launch of stablecoin and security breach
Despite Binance’s significant presence and activity in the Philippines, the SEC aims to provide investors with ample time to transition their investments to authorized platforms. SEC Chair Emilio Aquino emphasized the potential threat to investors’ security posed by continued access to Binance’s platform. In October 2024, Gambaryan was released after the Nigerian government dropped charges against him. The Nigerian government subsequently filed a criminal charge against Binance for tax evasion. 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.
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. 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.
- 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.
- Months later, a similar memorandum was signed with the Malta Stock Exchange to develop a platform for trading security 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 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.
- The acquisition allowed Binance to re-enter the Japanese cryptocurrency market.
Japan
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. In May 2021, it was reported that Binance was under investigation by both the Internal Revenue Service and the United States Department of Justice on allegations of money laundering and tax offenses. 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.
Nigeria
On 6 April 2023, the Australian Securities & Investments Commission cancelled the Australian financial services licence held by Oztures Trading Pty Ltd trading as Binance Australia Derivatives (Binance). 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 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. He also worked at OKCoin as CTO for less than a year, a platform for spot trading between fiat and digital assets.
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.
Tokens
In January 2025, French authorities opened a judicial investigation into Binance for potential involvement in money laundering, drug trafficking, and tax fraud within the European Union from 2019 to 2024. 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. In a formal statement issued on September 1, 2023, Binance announced it would discontinue support for BUSD.
BEP-20 Token Standard
In January 2019, Binance announced that it had partnered with Israel-based payment Binance cryptocurrency exchange processor Simplex to enable some cryptocurrencies to be purchased with debit and credit cards. This was intended to facilitate cryptocurrency transactions with less volatility. In August 2018, Binance along with three other large exchanges raised $32 million to fund the stablecoin project Terra.
Nigeria
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. In June 2019, the company announced it would prohibit US passport holders as well as anyone residing in the US, and would set up a new entity binance.us to support those customers. 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. 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.
Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, a developer who had previously created high-frequency trading software.
In response to this report, Binance fired the investigators and retained DWF Labs as a client, saying that the self trading could have been accidental and that the internal team collaborated too closely with one of DWF’s competitors. The investigation also found examples of DWF Labs selling tokens its founder had promoted causing a crash in those token’s price, which is consistent with a pump and dump scheme, and is against Binance’s terms of service. On 21 November 2023, a US judge convicted Binance on multiple charges—including violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, money laundering schemes, unlicensed money transmitting, and sanctions violations. In June 2023, Binance had 790 million US dollars in outflows after the SEC announced its lawsuit and Forbes reported that the company had 120 million users globally. Following the investment, the company announced the creation of a team to work on how blockchain and cryptocurrencies could be helpful to Twitter. 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 of cryptocurrencies suffered serious declines.
In May 2021, Bloomberg News reported that Binance was under investigation by the United States Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service for money laundering and tax evasion. This decision follows the SEC’s identification of Binance as operating without the necessary licensing for its investment and trading platform. Amid regulatory issues in Nigeria, Binance disabled its Naira services on 8 March 2024. In June 2023, Binance announced that it was leaving the Netherlands after failing to obtain regulatory approval. In April 2022, the Dutch central bank announced a €3.3m fine for Binance due to offering services within the Netherlands without being registered in the country.
BEP-20 Token Standard
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 March 2022, amidst the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Zhao refused to ban users from Russia, citing “financial freedom”. In September 2019, the exchange began offering perpetual futures contracts, allowing leverage as high as 125 times the value of the contracts. Later in 2023, Forbes leaked a document allegedly from Binance titled “TaiChi” that proposed this regulatory solution to reduce US regulatory risk.
That same year, Binance shared client data, including names and addresses, with the Russian government. 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.
On 21 November 2023, Binance pled guilty to federal charges, of money laundering, unlicensed money transmitting, and sanctions violations. In June 2023, the SEC said it was suing Binance and Zhao on 13 charges for alleged violations of US securities rules. In April 2023, three unidentified trading firms cited as VIP clients of Binance were revealed to be Radix Trading, Jane Street Capital, and Tower Research Capital. Over the course of several years, it was found that the intermediary wallet deposited $15 million worth of crypto onto Binance’s platform. This deal was called off in April 2023 due to what Binance.US called a “hostile and uncertain regulatory climate”.