Binance

Binance launched in 2017 and grew into one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. It is not open to people in the United States: in 2019 it announced it would block US customers and set up a separate company, Binance.US. If you are in the US, the exchange this page describes is not the one you would be using.

In November 2023 Binance pleaded guilty to US federal charges, and the record it admitted to is the most important thing on this page. According to the Department of Justice, Binance admitted to anti-money-laundering failures, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and sanctions violations, and agreed to pay more than $4.3 billion. For years it let people open accounts and trade with nothing more than an email address, it never filed a suspicious activity report with US authorities, and after announcing it would block US customers it took steps to keep its most valuable ones. Its founder, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering programme, stepped down as chief executive and served a four-month sentence. He received a presidential pardon in October 2025; the company's own plea, and the facts it admitted, stand on the record.

A separate SEC civil case ended differently. The SEC sued Binance, Binance.US and Zhao in June 2023; in May 2025 it dismissed the case with prejudice "as a policy matter", saying the decision did not necessarily reflect its position on any other case. That ending tells you about the regulator's change of approach, not about what the exchange did.

What the plea changed is worth knowing too. The 2023 resolution included a monitorship to oversee Binance's compliance with US law, and since May 2022 an account has needed identity checks to keep trading. None of that is a guarantee about anyone's money. It means the conduct described above is the documented record, and the account you would open today is held to rules the company once ignored.

The keys are Binance's. A balance there is a claim on an offshore company, which is a weaker position than a claim on a company in your own country, because the courts, regulators and bankruptcy rules that would decide what happens to it are not ones you can easily reach. It is a place to trade, not to keep savings. Nobody from Binance will ever ask for your seed phrase or ask you to move funds to a wallet they name — see what a wallet actually is and not your keys, not your coins.