The Largest Exchange Moves to Malta

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by traded value revealed its plans to move to Malta due to the country’s “progressive” view on crypto, Bloomberg reported.

In an interview from Hong Kong, the company’s founder Zhao Changpeng said that Binance will soon start a “fiat-to-crypto exchange” on the European island nation, and is close to securing a deal with local banks that can provide access to deposits and withdrawals.

He added, “We are very confident we can announce a banking partnership there soon. Malta is very progressive when it comes to crypto and fintech.” Zhao said he had recently been invited by the Maltese government to review an upcoming bill that was favorable to crypto businesses, as policy makers in the country look for ways to promote the nation as a leader in the digital assets field.

Binance is seeing its share of trouble lately: they received a warning letter from the Securities and Futures Commission telling them, and six other exchanges, not to trade digital assets defined as securities under Hong Kong law.

Only yesterday, it was revealed that Binance was in talks with the Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA) to obtain a license in order to operate there, but that they were now issued a warning from the FSA for operating without a license, since they had several staff in Japan. It would seem that they now decided to remove their staff to avoid a clash with local regulators.

Binance is also planning to launch a decentralized exchange, to be implemented alongside the current one. Zhao told Bloomberg that, although about 10 teams are working on its development, the technology is currently too slow to replace the firm’s existing centralized exchange.