Largest Cryptocurrency Exchange in the World Binance Bans South Africa From Margin Trading

Binance continues to curb its derivatives offering and has recently targeted its South African services. Binance, is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has taken another step in refining its product offerings in different markets around the world, and this time it has hit closer to home. It has ceased the offering of crypto futures, options, margins, and leveraged tokens to South African users, the exchange announced on Friday.

It is ranked as the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume. “Binance constantly evaluates its product and service offerings to comply with local regulations,” the company said in a statement. “With immediate effect, South African users will be restricted from opening new accounts for these products,” the exchange stated.

However, Binance has provided existing users a deadline of 90 days to reduce and close their open positions. “Users will be able to top-up margin balances to prevent margin calls and liquidations, but they will not be able to increase or open new positions,” it added. “Users will no longer be able to manually reduce or close their positions after 6th January 2022 11:59 PM (UTC). Thereafter all remaining open positions will be closed.”

According to Binance, the step has been taken to align its services with local regulations. Binance received regulatory warnings from several global regulators. Some even took enforcement actions and forced the crypto exchange to shutter its services. However, the South African regulator did not flag the exchange for any particular reason.

Earlier, Binance ceased derivatives services in several European countries as well as Australia and Hong Kong. It even ceased offering spot trading services in Singapore on its primary platform, Binance.com. Meanwhile, Binance took several other steps to align its services with regulatory frameworks. It mandates KYC globally and onboarded multiple former regulatory and government officials, appointing them in key compliance roles.

“Binance welcomes developments to our industry’s regulatory framework as they pose opportunities for the market players to have greater collaboration with the regulators,” the exchange added.