Binance Holdings Ltd., branded Binance, is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies. Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao. It was initially based in China, then moved to Japan, subsequently left Japan for Malta, and now has no official company headquarters.
Binance has been the subject of lawsuits and challenges from regulatory authorities. As a result, it has been banned from operating or ordered to cease operations in some countries, and has been issued fines. On 21 November 2023, Binance pleaded guilty to violating U.S. anti–money laundering rules and paid a $4.3 billion fine. The United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority ordered Binance to stop all regulated activity in the UK in June 2021. In March 2025, The Wall Street Journal uncovered that the company was in talks with Donald Trump's family about business dealings. In August 2025, The Wall Street Journal found that Binance was quietly administering a trading platform for the Trump family's World Liberty Financial. The company paid lobbyists $800,000 to lobby for a pardon for Zhao from President Trump, which was granted in October 2025.
Binance pledged zero tolerance for illicit activities on the exchange in 2023, but investigative journalists have found that it continues to profit from money laundering for organized crime groups and sanctioned entities. Internal investigators at Binance found evidence that Russia and Iran, two sanctioned states, continued to use Binance accounts to move money; after reporting these suspicious transactions to Binance leadership, the internal investigators were fired or suspended. In 2026, the Wall Street Journal reported that Binance was under investigation by the United States Department of Justice for allegedly evading sanctions on Iran-backed designated foreign terrorist organizations such as the Houthis. U.S. federal prosecutors also alleged in an asset forfeiture lawsuit that Chinese companies used Binance to launder the proceeds of oil sales for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
History
2013–2017: company beginnings and move out of China CEO Changpeng Zhao founded Fusion Systems in 2005 in Shanghai; the company built high-frequency trading systems for stockbrokers. 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. Zhao was hired at this position in 2014 by Yi He, with whom he co-founded Binance several years later.
Binance was founded in 2017. The company raised about $15 million through an initial coin offering (ICO) that year to fund the launch of the exchange. The company later moved its operations out of mainland China after Chinese regulators began cracking down on cryptocurrency trading in 2017.
2018–2019: launch of stablecoin and security breach 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. In March 2018, Binance announced its intentions to open an office in Malta after stricter regulations in Japan and China. In April 2018, Binance signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Bermuda. Months later, a similar memorandum was signed with the Malta Stock Exchange to develop a platform for trading security tokens. 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 June 2018, Binance and three other firms raised $65 million for sports blockchain company Chiliz. 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. In August 2018, Binance along with three other large exchanges raised $32 million to fund the stablecoin project Terra. This was intended to facilitate cryptocurrency transactions with less volatility.
In January 2019, Binance announced that it had partnered with Israel-based payment processor Simplex to enable some cryptocurrencies to be purchased with debit and credit cards. On 7 May 2019, Binance revealed that it had been the victim of a "large scale security breach" in which hackers had stolen 7,000 bitcoin worth around $40 million at the time. Binance halted all transactions for one week while investigating. Binance also pledged to reimburse customers from an emergency fund.
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. Later in 2023, Forbes leaked a document allegedly from Binance titled "TaiChi" that proposed this regulatory solution to reduce US regulatory risk. Binance subsequently denied the document, sued Forbes for defamation, and subsequently dropped the lawsuit. In September 2019, the exchange began offering perpetual futures contracts, allowing leverage as high as 125 times the value of the contracts. 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.
2020–2023 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. The statement noted that Binance "is not authorized by the MFSA to operate in the cryptocurrency sphere and is therefore not subject to regulatory oversight by the MFSA." The MFSA added that it was "assessing if Binance has any activities in Malta which may not fall within the realm of regulatory oversight."
In July 2020, Binance announced a "strategic partnership" with a Chinese state-owned enterprise under the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council and that Binance had joined a group "aiming to facilitate" the Belt and Road Initiative. On 28 October 2020, Forbes staff released leaked documents showing that Binance and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao, created an elaborate corporate structure designed to intentionally deceive United States regulators and secretly profit from cryptocurrency investors located in the country. Binance officially blocks access from IP addresses located in the United States, but "potential customers would be taught how to evade geographic restrictions", Forbes claimed.
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. In February 2022, Binance took a $200 million stake in Forbes. It's unclear if this investment was ever completed. In May 2022, Forbes Global Media Holdings halted plans to go public via a merger with Magnum Opus Acquisition Ltd, a Hong Kong-based special-purpose acquisition company. Zhao said the plan had "changed a little bit, but I believe that's still in discussions." In February 2023, Zhao tweeted his disappointment that Forbes "continues to write baseless articles" about Binance. In March 2022, amidst the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Zhao refused to ban users from Russia, citing "financial freedom". Binance later softened the tone of their opposition but not their policy, and also pointed to their donation of $10 million for humanitarian needs in Ukraine.
In 2022, Reuters released several investigative reports on Binance. In January, it documented multiple instances of Binance withholding information from government investigators and business partners and ignoring warnings from its own compliance teams about money laundering risks and poor know your customer compliance. Binance disputed this report's accuracy. In June, Reuters found that Binance had acted as a conduit for the laundering of at least $2.35 billion from hacks, $780 million from the Russian darknet market Hydra, and €800 million from investment scams. The report also found that the Lazarus Group had used Binance to launder funds stolen by North Korea to support its weapons program. Binance disputed these findings. In April, Reuters reported that, in 2021, Binance shared information with Rosfinmonitoring about funds raised by late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's network.
In March 2023, Binance banned Russian residents from buying euros and dollars through its p2p service. In turn, European users lost the ability to buy rubles. In September 2023, Binance announced it was leaving Russia and selling its business to the CommEX platform, which had launched the previous week. Russian users' Binance accounts were able to transfer to the new platform until March 2024. CommEX shut down on 10 May 2024.
On 27 May 2022, Binance announced the registration of its legal entity in Italy and plans to open offices there. At the time, the company was also seeking registration in more European countries, such as Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Netherlands, Portugal, and Austria. Binance registered to operate in Spain in July 2022 and in Sweden in January 2023. On 13 June 2022, Binance announced that for an unspecified period of time users would be unable to withdraw their funds held in bitcoin, as the value of cryptocurrencies suffered serious declines. Bitcoin withdrawals were allowed to resume later the same day. On October 6, 2022, Binance Coin was hacked, affecting around $568 million in tokens.
Binance invested US$500 million toward the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk that was completed in October 2022. After the investment, it announced the creation of a team to work on how blockchain and cryptocurrencies could be helpful to Twitter. 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. Binance backed out of the deal the next day, citing concerns about FTX's business practices and investigations by US financial regulators. On 30 November 2022, Binance purchased Sakura Exchange. The acquisition allowed Binance to reenter the Japanese cryptocurrency market.
In July 2023, several senior Binance executives resigned. The Wall Street Journal reported that Binance had cut its global workforce by as many as 1,000 staff. CNBC reported that the staff cuts could total 3,000 by the end of 2023. Zhao did not deny layoffs were occurring but said both the reported numbers and the reasons for the senior executive departures were inaccurate. In June 2023, Binance had $790 million in outflows after the SEC announced its lawsuit and Forbes reported that the company had 120 million users globally. 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. As part of the plea deal, the company agreed to pay $4 billion in fines, and Zhao stepped down as CEO with a $50 million fine. He was succeeded by Richard Teng.
2024–present