As it turns out, the other exchange has a license to trade some things – such as shares in private companies and tokenized assets – but not cryptocurrencies. More importantly, the real reason for the withdrawal was that Binance’s affiliate didn’t meet Singapore’s criteria for protecting against money laundering and terrorist financing, a person familiar with the matter said after it happened last month. Binance denies this, saying it pulled the application on strategic and commercial grounds.
Binance Holdings Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Changpeng Zhao was putting on a brave face.
An affiliate of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange had just withdrawn its application to run a bourse in Singapore. Zhao, the richest person in cryptocurrency with a fortune of about US$90 billion ($121.4 billion), took to Twitter to say the affiliate’s investment in another exchange – one that was regulated – made the application “somewhat redundant.”
