Affected by the new regulations in the UK, Binance suspended new user registrations and stopped offering new products or services in October last year. Now, Binance is seeking to re-enter the UK market, but it’s not that simple. The reason is that potential local partners in the UK are unwilling to cooperate with Binance due to opposition from regulatory authorities.
(Previous summary: Binance UK hit hard: suspends new user registrations, limited services, what happened?)
(Supplementary background: Tether puts pressure on Binance in the US! Florida and Alaska fully ban Binance.US operations.)
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) of the UK implemented new regulations for cryptocurrency promotion, which officially took effect on October 8th last year. According to Article 21, unregulated overseas digital asset service providers like Binance must collaborate with FCA-authorized companies in order to promote digital asset services in the UK.
However, after the FCA terminated the agreement between Binance and its local partner, P2P lending company Rebuildingsociety.com, in October last year, Binance announced with regret that it would temporarily suspend new user registrations and stop offering new products or services.
According to Bloomberg’s report, Binance is currently seeking to re-enter the UK market, but its efforts have encountered obstacles. Informed sources revealed that at least three FCA-authorized companies, which can supervise communications between cryptocurrency platforms and their clients, have rejected Binance’s cooperation requests.
Two informed sources revealed that before these potential partners of Binance rejected the cooperation, the FCA had expressed its concerns to several authorized companies inquiring about cooperation with Binance.
The stance of the FCA indicates that Richard Teng, the new CEO of Binance, faces a challenging task. In November last year, after Binance reached a settlement agreement with the US Department of Justice and other institutions and agreed to pay a $4.3 billion fine, Binance founder Zhao Changpeng resigned as CEO, and Richard Teng took over. He is seeking to rebuild trust in Binance from global regulatory institutions.
Binance denies encountering regulatory resistance in its efforts to re-enter the UK market. Binance stated through email that the legal challenges it faces in the United States have always been a major obstacle to its global operations. As early as 2021, the FCA warned consumers not to use Binance services because the global structure of the company is opaque and it “cannot” be effectively regulated.
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