Binance Jersey shutting down after less than 2 years’ operation

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Less than two years since it launched, Binance Jersey is shutting down. The cryptocurrency exchange was launched to tap into the European market, but things haven’t panned out, with the Jersey-based Binance subsidiary recording dismal numbers since launch.

Binance Jersey was launched in January 2019 by the exchange to expand its presence in Europe. At launch, it offered its users within the United Kingdom and the European Union fiat-to-digital currency trading with the British pound (GBP) and the euro (EUR).

As revealed by Cointelegraph, it has not worked out for the Binance exchange and it will soon be shutting down. The exchange will restrict deposits of the GBP, the EUR and all the other supported digital currencies by October 30. Trading and withdrawal of both digital and fiat currencies will be allowed up until November 9. Binance Jersey’s final shutdown will take place on November 30, after which users will cease to have access to their accounts.

The exchange didn’t reveal the reason for the shutdown, and neither did its parent company, Binance. However, on Twitter, the founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao claimed the shutdown was due to “better fiat gateways already supported by the parent exchange.” He also reassured the users that they wouldn’t lose the features they have grown accustomed to.

While he dismissed the shutdown as a strategic move, the numbers paint a different picture. As per CoinMarketCap data, Binance Jersey never really took off and has been performing poorly ever since. In the past 24 hours, it only processed $202,743 worth of trading activity. The exchange’s native token, BNB, was a notable dismal performer, with the BNB/EUR trading pair accounting for just $5,500.

The shutdown of Binance Jersey comes at a time when the focus and scrutiny on Binance is at an all-time high. In September 2020, a Japanese exchange sued Binance over its role in laundering over $9 million in stolen digital currency. The exchange claimed in its lawsuit that after criminals hacked it for over $63 million, they used Binance to liquidate a huge chunk of the money because Binance’s KYC and AML protocols “are shockingly lax and do not measure up to industry standards.”

Follow CoinGeek’s Crypto Crime Cartel series, which delves into the stream of groups—from BitMEX to Binance, Bitcoin.com, Blockstream and Ethereum—who have co-opted the digital asset revolution and turned the industry into a minefield for naïve (and even experienced) players in the market.