x
Registered users of Binance have hit 150 million, the crypto exchange’s founder and CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), announced on social media. The milestone has been reached despite increased regulatory pressure on the world’s largest trading platform for digital assets in the past few months.
The biggest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, Binance, now has 150 million registered users, its chief executive unveiled in a tweet on Thursday. In the post, CZ also marked some of the company’s recent successes that came amid heightened regulatory scrutiny of its business operations around the world.
This year, Binance has been targeted by authorities in a number of its established markets. In the U.S., it’s involved in legal battles with the country’s securities and derivatives commissions, which sued it for breaking laws in their respective fields.
In Europe, the exchange is under investigation by French prosecutors for money laundering and was ordered by Belgium’s financial watchdog to cease providing crypto services in the country. It also withdrew its license applications and canceled its registrations in several countries.
Despite the challenges on both sides of the Atlantic, Binance has been able to grow its user base by 30 million in the past year. Chinese crypto journalist Colin Wu noted in a tweet that in July 2022 the exchange said the number of its registered users had exceeded 120 million.
The blogger, better known by his Twitter handle, Wu Blockchain, also quoted data from web analytics firm Similarweb, according to which Binance’s top five sources of traffic in the last three months have been Turkey, Vietnam, Russia, Argentina, and India.
Besides the lawsuits filed by regulators, a probe by the U.S. Department of Justice is looking into whether the crypto trading platform has been used by Russians to circumvent sanctions imposed on their country over its military invasion of Ukraine.
While amid this regulatory crackdown, the market share of Binance’s U.S. subsidiary shrank significantly, a report by the Wall Street Journal revealed on Tuesday that Binance users in China exchanged $90 billion of crypto assets in a month, making the country its biggest market. That’s despite a ban on crypto trading since 2021.
In his tweet, CEO Changpeng Zhao also highlighted some of his company’s recent successes. Binance is restoring full services in Japan this month, following the acquisition of a locally registered and regulated exchange in November 2022. It also obtained a license to provide crypto services in and from Dubai.
