Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world, has received heavy blows in recent months. After the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued the crypto exchange, notably lost Binance.US a huge market share. Yet Binance international still remains the largest, and apparently especially in China, and that is very remarkable.
China remains the largest market for Binance, despite a blanket trade ban on crypto, The Wall Street Journal reports. In China, it has been officially illegal to trade and mine te crypto since september of 2021. Also, companies in China are not allowed to offer crypto services. As a result, it would be very difficult for the Chinese population to get close to crypto at all. At least, you’d think so.
However, according to The Wall Street Journal, customers in China would represent as much as 20% of Binance’s global trading volume. The Chinese trading volume on Binance is even larger than that of any mainstream Western country. The next countries on the list are, from large to small, South Korea, Turkey, Vietnam and the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean.
More precisely, China accounts for a futures market of 80.6 billion dollars and for a spot crypto market of 9.4 billion US dollars. By comparison, number two, South Korea, provides $ 56.9 billion in futures volume and $ 1.4 billion in spot market volume. In the British Virgin Islands, it is only 12.8 billion and 5 billion dollars. Asia clearly tightens the crown.
Chinese crypto customers presumably use VPNs
In total, Binance is said to have around 900,000 active users in China. Perhaps this is a major reason why the news that Binance has been sued by the SEC was broadcast by Chinese state television.
In fact, WSJ notes that Binance regularly cooperates with Chinese law enforcement to fight crime. The Chinese people often use privacy protection tools such as VPNs to access sites that are not allowed by China’s “Great firewall”, which also blocks crypto companies such as Binance. Presumably, this means that such a large number of traders still come from China.
