Binance is officially an unauthorized entity in Malaysia and treated as such by the Securities Commission of the country (Source).
"Operating a recognized market without authorization from the SC."
It is worth noting that the location of Binance is marked as N/A, still the website is running from a certain location as it is a centralized service. Although Binance has not declared a location hosting their headquarters yet.
We had the fiasco of Malta as Binance was referred to as Malta-based exchange by crypto news since 2018, probably because of the typical crypto hype statements to create unnecessary FOMO as this one:
"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. (link)
Nothing was ever officially announced and the exchange was never regulated by Maltese financial authorities. The financial authorities of Malta announced that Binance was not a legal entity in the country and it was never authorized by the country to operate as an exchange in the cryptocurrency sphere. This announcement came just a month after Joseph Muscat lost the January elections and stepped down after seven years in office as Prime Minister. He was succeeded by Robert Abela and there seems to be a shift in focus in the country away from cryptocurrencies.
Malta is also considered a hub for money laundering, online gambling, and corruption in the EU where money from both legal and illegal activities is laundered to avoid taxation and sent to safe-haven financial locations like Panama and Cayman Islands.
The event of the assassination of anti-corruption journalist and author Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017 was the last straw for some EU authorities and they started pressing Malta for strict regulations and a crackdown on corruption and money laundering practices. Anyway, the case of Malta demands a case-study of its own and will not be discussed further in this article.
Malaysia was also the country selected by Binance to test its failed Visa crypto card project which we never had any news about how the deal didn't proceed. There was no further news or announcement of Visa issuing a card for Binance and suddenly Binance removed the Visa logo from their crypto card.
“We’ll first introduce the beta version of the Binance Card in Malaysia this April, and we’ll add more regions throughout the rest of this year. We see this as a global product.”
The Binance crypto card was eventually released after they acquired Swipe, but in the EU and not in the South East Asian region as it was originally planned. The Binance debit card does not include the VISA logo on it and all Visa images on the Binance website have been replaced.
Binance card is available for these counties: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Gibraltar, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
Ordering the card demands some strict KYC procedure which Binance calls level-2 KYC. The Binance exchange user and holder of the Binance crypto card will be able to select the order of the cryptocurrencies held in the Binance exchange and funds will be deducted according to this order while using the Crypto Card for purchases.
Honestly, I'm not in favor of a Crypto Card. I don't see a reason to use the soon to be an obsolete system of plastic money of the traditional 80s banking system. Moreover, the fees using a Bankcard are lower and usually, they don't demand issuance or maintenance fees, making the Binance Card lag in competition and not worth using it.
I don't see any reason why we need crypto debit cards. We don't need to use the traditional financial system and we don't change it this way. These are backward steps that prove to banks that crypto is irrelevant and we are in definite need of them to proceed. I was surprised in 2017 with Monaco Card (MCO - Now called Crypto.com) and TenX growing popular because they were planning to create a crypto card to be used in POS banking systems. One of the reasons we need cryptocurrencies is to avoid these systems.
Anyway, you've been warned. The moment your crypto card gets rejected by your local merchant for the first time, think again which is the real reason cryptocurrencies exist.
I'm off-topic in more than half of this post, yet I had these thoughts for a while now and found a proper excuse to express them. Hopefully, I didn't bore you too much.
Thanks for reading!
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First posted on read.cash - Reposted on Publish0x and Uptrennd.
Amazing article. Thank you so much for sharing it.