China reportedly remains a lucrative market for the crypto exchange Binance even though the country made trading digital assets illegal in 2021.
The Wall Street Journal reports that two years after the ban, Binance users in China traded $90 billion worth of crypto-related assets in the month of May alone. The news outlet says it viewed internal figures from the exchange.
That volume makes the East Asian country the platform’s biggest market, accounting for 20% of its global volume, excluding the trades of very large traders.
Citing current and former Binance employees, the report also says China’s importance is openly discussed within the organization. The firm’s investigation team also continues to work closely with Chinese authorities to identify potential criminal activities among the platform’s 900,000 active users in the country.
Internal documents likewise reveal how Binance helps users bypass restrictions by directing them to visit websites with Chinese domain names before rerouting them to the global exchange. The documents laying out the procedure circulated within the company after authorities blocked the platform’s website in 2017.
A Binance spokesperson pushed back against the report, telling the Wall Street Journal that Chinese users cannot access Binance.com.
“The Binance.com website is blocked in China and is not accessible to China-based users.”
China has declared crypto-related transactions illegal, citing security and social stability reasons. After the government intensified the crackdown in 2021, Binance said that China-based user accounts would be switched to withdrawal mode only, which disallows trading transactions.
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