Binance Stops Offerings Derivatives in 3 European Countries

Binance, the largest crypto spot and derivatives exchange, announced on Friday that it has plans to no longer offer futures and derivatives products across Europe. The exchange has already started the wind-down by withdrawing derivatives product offerings in three countries: Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

“With immediate effect, users from these countries will not be able to open new futures or derivatives products accounts,” the exchange stated in the official notice.

For the already opened positions, Binance will announce a future closure date, marking an altogether exit from the crypto derivatives market in the three European countries.

“With effect from a later date to be announced in a further notice, users from these countries will have 90 days to close their open positions,” the announcement added.

Measures to Avoid Regulatory Backlash

The decision came only days after the crypto exchange giant decided to delist all margin trading pairs with three fiats: pound sterling, euro and Australian dollar. It even lowered the maximum leverage levels from 125x to merely 20x.

Binance has maintained to lead the crypto derivatives exchanges in terms of the trading volume for a while now. According to Coinmarketcap.com, the exchange has handled more than $53.5 billion worth of crypto derivatives volume in the last 24 hours, while its closest competitor, OKEx, reported only $13.6 billion.

The exchange decision to slowly wind down risky investment products started as it is facing regulatory crackdown in around a dozen of jurisdictions. Financial market regulators in the UK, Japan, Thailand, Poland, the Cayman Islands and many more have either warned the exchange or taken legal steps against it.

Upon the growing concerns over Binance’s stock token offers among many European regulators, the exchange also ended support for that service earlier this month.

Meanwhile, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao recently said that the management is considering taking Binance’s US affiliate, Binance US, public, but a lot of structural changes are needed for that move.