China Is Binance’s Largest Market: WSJ

A bombshell report from the Wall Street Journal says that Binance users traded $90 billion of crypto related assets in China in a single month making China where crypto is banned Bin's largest market by far Emily, what's going on? Yeah, I mean, this is a stunning report. II I this is a really really important report. So for those who follow crypto in Asia and crypto in China, specifically, they're not going to be surprised. It's kind of been an open secret that a crypto is not dead in China and B finance is not dead in China. People generally know that in the region, but it's very hard to find data that documents that and the Wall Street Journal appears to have done that by they, they cite internal figures and also um uh internal figures and also current and former employees. Now, um our reporter actually reached out to them for a comment, they didn't reply by deadline. But anyway, the Wall Street Journal is putting together a very strong case that, that that Binance is still alive and well in China. Now, I just want to unpack this for a second because it's really really important. So some of the statistics in here are just amazing. First of all, as you just said that it is um Bin's largest market by far, accounting for 20% of volume worldwide excluding trades made by a subset of very large traders. That's from the article. Now, why is this important? OK. This is Bin's largest market and is the largest Cryptocurrency exchange in the world processing more crypto transactions than any of its than most of its competitors combined, right? So what that says is that China is still a very big player in the Cryptocurrency market. Ok. So that's really important, China is still a really important global player. According to this, you know, the top markets for finance are China, South Korea, Turkey, Vietnam, China is number one. So it says that China is still very active. Uh the numbers here, I just can't really get over this report. It's just amazing, right? It's it's saying that there are 900,000 active users in the country. Again, that's a lot. But the other really important point here that I think we need to focus on is, you know, Amita, you just said that crypto is banned in China. That's how a lot of people describe it clearly. Not exactly right. I mean, because what's interesting about this report is clearly Chinese authorities know to some degree that this is going on. And another really interesting fact in here is that the Wall Street journal writes that the exchanges, investigations teams works with Chinese law enforcement to, to kind of weed out criminal activity among these users. So the Chinese authorities are aware of this to some extent. And I think that is a very, very, very important thing to, to, to look at here. Is this a situation of gambling in Casablanca? I mean, like in other words, it's, it's are they legally operating, do they have licenses to operate in China and to do these transactions or could one day somebody wake up and go, you know what? We don't like finance anymore? It's closed. We don't even have to pass laws or regulation. We just like we just have to enforce what's on the books. Well, I mean, I think officially the official story is that finance isn't operating in China. And if you look at that comment that Binance gave to the Wall Street Journal, they say like, ok, Binance dot com is blocked. That is sort of the official narrative that finance is not in China. But again, what's important here to look at is why this is happening is because it it it shines some light on potential motive by the Chinese government when it comes to crypto. So I think it's fair to say that China is not trying to stamp out crypto entirely. If there are 900,000 active users on Binance in China. I think it's fair to say that Chinese authorities know about it. And, um, so I think to some degree they are allowing this to happen, um, at a certain level. Yeah, we've been looking at that in, uh, in India too. Uh, and even though according to this report, India doesn't feature, uh, for Binance in the top five, at least, uh, British Cayman Islands is fifth on that list. Uh, we Binance has been working within India's enforcement authorities just the same way. They've been working with China's. And what we also, uh, have, have learned, uh, from some, uh, reporting is that, uh, Chinese authorities have in a way, conceded that it is difficult to implement the ban. Uh, which is why there's so much activity. Uh, we're obviously, uh, you know, trying to understand more about whether this is a global thing or just a China thing and we'll continue to talk to Emily about this and this report is clearly, uh, you know, one part of that. Thanks Emily.