Binance Singapore has withdrawn its application for a license to operate a cryptocurrency exchange and will close its trading platform in the state of the city before February 13th.
Binance Singapore users will be informed by email of the steps to be taken if the platform goes offline.
“We always put our users first, so our decision to close Binance.sg was not taken lightly,” said Richard Teng, Chief Executive Officer of Binance Singapore. “Our immediate priority is to help our users in Singapore transition their holdings to other wallets or other third-party services.”
Binance Singapore was one of around 170 companies that had applied for a license to provide crypto services with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and were operating under a temporary exception during the licensing process.
The company said its city-state operations are now becoming a blockchain innovation hub with initiatives like blockchain incubation programs, education and investments.
Last week Binance Singapore invested in Hg Exchange, a private regional exchange. The deal gives Binance Singapore 18% of stake in a Singapore-based exchange to which MAS granted a recognized market operator license earlier this year. The deal be subject to regulatory requirements.
Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, or CZ, which made it the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of transaction volume, according to CoinGecko’s ranking. Although the company does not have an official headquarters, Binance’s main trading platform still managed to record an average daily trading volume of $ 2 billion and over 1.4 million trades per second, according to its website. Zhao recently told Bloomberg that Binance has already decided on the location of its headquarters and will announce it soon.
