Italy becomes the latest country to ban Binance as global crackdown on the world’s largest crypto exchange widens
Daniel Levi
Posted On July 15, 2021
The dominos keep on falling. Just last week, we wrote about Binance after reports that seven countries are now investigating the world’s largest crypto exchange for money laundering and illegal activities. Singapore, the country with some of the toughest cryptocurrency regulations in the world, said it’s going to “follow up on global Binance concerns” amid global regulatory scrutiny of the company.
Today, Italy is now the latest in the list of countries cracking down on the world’s largest crypto exchange. In an announcement Thursday, the country’s market watchdog said that Binance is not authorized to carry out activities in Italy, joining a string of global regulatory moves against the 16-year old crypto startup.
In a statement posted on its website, Italy market watchdog Consob said in a statement that Binance Group companies are not authorized to provide investment services and activities in Italy.
“Consob warns savers that the companies of the “Binance Group” are not authorized to provide
investment services and activities in Italy, not even through the website www.binance.com
whose sections called “derivatives” and “Stock Token”, relating to instruments related to
crypto-assets were previously also written in Italian,” Consob wrote.
The watchdog also added that “Savers are invited to make use of their utmost diligence in order to make their investment choices in full awareness, verifying in advance that the websites through which they make the investment can be attributed to authorized subjects.”
Meanwhile, a Binance spokesperson said its website did not operate out of Italy and that the Consob notice had no direct impact on its services.
“We take a collaborative approach in working with regulators and we take our compliance obligations very seriously,” he added. Italy is not alone. Watchdogs in the U.K., Thailand, Japan, Germany, and the United States are also investigating the company.
Domiciled in the Cayman Islands, Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao and Yi He. The exchange provides a platform for trading various cryptocurrencies. Today, Binance is the world’s largest crypto exchange. Binance provides access to exchange digital currency pairs on the market while maintaining security, liquidity, enabling a safe and efficient deal with anyone, anytime and anywhere.
Before founding Binance, CEO Changpeng Zhao previously founded Fusion Systems in 2005 in Shanghai; the company that built high-frequency trading systems for brokers. In 2013 he joined Blockchain.info as the third member of the cryptocurrency wallet’s team. He also worked at OKCoin as CTO for less than a year, a platform for spot trading between fiat and digital assets.
