The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) highlighted that China remains the largest market for Binance, with the country contributing over $90 billion in spot and futures trading volume in May. This was disclosed through an internal platform called “Mission Control,” where most of the volume was attributed to futures trading.
According to the report, Binance maintains an active collaboration with Chinese authorities to detect and address potential illicit activities within its extensive user base of over 900,000 active accounts. As of May, the exchange had 5.6 million registered users in China. Interestingly, Binance also recorded significant trading volumes in South Korea, Turkey, Vietnam, and the British Virgin Islands. WSJ revealed internal documents suggesting that Binance allegedly assisted Chinese users in bypassing restrictions by directing them to visit certain websites with Chinese domain names, which ultimately redirected them to the global exchange platform.
Binance’s CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao was associated with a Palau program that sold residency cards to foreigners, reportedly to support Chinese users. However, the exchange later distanced itself from the project. Also, Chinese users at Binance utilized Virtual Private Networks (VPN) to evade restrictions imposed by China’s government crypto ban. Although Binance refrained from commenting on China’s trading volume, the exchange firmly denied any direct links to the Asian country.
Furthermore, the exchange emphasized that it had never been registered or incorporated in China. Despite repeated allegations, Zhao consistently denied any connections to China and criticized critics for using his place of birth and ethnicity to spread FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) about the exchange.
