Key takeaways:
- Binance has announced its complete withdrawal from Russia by selling its company to CommEX.
- The off-boarding procedure will take up to a year to ensure a smooth transition for current Russian users.
Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange, has announced its complete withdrawal from Russia by selling its company to CommEX, a recently established cryptocurrency exchange.
According to a statement made by the company on September 27, Binance and CommEX have reached a deal for Binance to sell the entirety of its Russia business to CommEX. The exchange withheld the deal’s financial specifics.
According to the release, the off-boarding procedure will take up to a year to ensure a smooth transition for current Russian users. According to Binance, all of the existing Russian users’ assets are safe and safely guarded. Noah Perlman, the chief compliance officer at Binance, added:
“We remain confident in the long-term growth of the Web3 industry around the world and will focus our energy on the 100+ other countries in which we operate.”
Binance will make sure to offer its customers a smooth user transfer procedure. Binance will instruct users on transferring their assets to the recently established exchange in collaboration with CommEX.
A fraction of Russian users who have successfully passed Know Your Customer checks will be promptly redirected to CommEX thanks to the user migration process. Over the coming months, Binance will gradually shut down its platform in Russia. In the announcement, Binance said:
“Every effort will be made to maintain a smooth user experience during this transition,”
Holders of Binance’s native cryptocurrency, BNB, will “continue to enjoy” a 25% trading discount on CommEX, according to CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) of Binance. The statement in the announcement emphasized that Binance will completely leave Russia and have no connections to the exchange:
“Unlike similar deals from international companies in Russia, Binance will have no ongoing revenue split from the sale, nor does it maintain any option to buy back shares in the business.”
The news was released just one day after CommEX announced its launch on September 26. The platform is made to offer spot, futures, and peer-to-peer trading services for cryptocurrencies. The platform’s UI is only available in Russian and English, suggesting that it would initially target mostly Russian consumers.
Since the exchange has been dealing with significant regulatory difficulties connected to complying with Western sanctions against Russia, Binance has been preparing to leave Russia.
However, as of August 2023, despite regulatory pressure, Binance was still advertising its services to Russian users. Top Russian executives eventually left the company due to the trade in early September.
