Binance Hires in UK, Plans to Seek FCA Approval for Launch: Report
“We want to continue to establish a presence in the U.K. and serve U.K. users in a fully licensed and fully compliant manner.”
Dec 6, 2021 at 10:46 a.m. UTCUpdated May 11, 2023 at 7:03 p.m. UTC
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Changpeng "CZ" Zhao (CoinDesk Archives)
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Just months after the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said Binance should not be operating in the country, the world’s largest crypto exchange said it has hired staff and plans to file for regulatory approval. CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao told the Sunday Telegraph that relations have improved since its ban in June.
- “We’re making a number of very substantial changes in organizational structures, product offerings, our internal processes and the way we work with regulators,” Zhao said. “We want to continue to establish a presence in the U.K. and serve U.K. users in a fully licensed and fully compliant manner.”
- One option is to set up a U.K. company similar to Binance.US. This could address FCA concerns pertaining to Binance’s opaque structure, such as not having an established headquarters to which concerns can be addressed.
- The FCA said in June that no entity in the Binance group “holds any form of U.K. authorization, registration or license to conduct regulated activity in the U.K,” adding that the exchange was “not capable of being effectively supervised.”
- The notice was one of the first of several warnings from similar bodies around the world, which prompted Binance to take a more proactive strategy on regulatory matters.
- Zhao told the Sunday Telegraph that Binance has since set up an office in Britain, manned by a “number of ex-regulatory staff from the U.K. and a couple of hundred compliance people.”
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Jamie Crawley is a CoinDesk news reporter based in London.