Whoever wrote the new MiCA law likely left this loophole. Binance isn't violating anything, the exchange doesn't operate in Europe and doesn't advertise its services there. And if Europeans themselves wish to use Georgian intermediaries to trade on the exchange from the UAE or other offshore jurisdictions, that's not prohibited.

Currently you don't need a VPN to access binance. If you had an account in the EU, even with a verified address, they're happy to let you trade and even deposit and withdraw EUR via Georgia.

It does look like they're in direct violation of MiCA. Just trying to stay out of EU's enforcement doesn't mean that they aren't breaking the rules by providing services to EU citizens. It's interesting they keep breaking the rules even after CZ went to jail for just that, allowing US citizens to access the platform. Even for the case of the US it was with VPN... Here it's much more egregious. Seems like they really are not afraid of EU's regulatory overreach especially with the fragmented by country market and lack of unified prosecution for individuals.

So they just seem to have gone rogue for the EU. Good for them I guess. Binance continued to have more volumes and cheaper fees than any MiCA verified exchange so ultimately it's good for competition that EU users still have access to a deep and trusted market to perform their trades and. No matter how "rogue" that is, I hope it lasts. Fuck the EU's consumer protection laws. In the end they narrowed the market and ultimately made it more expensive to do a simple trade.

Binance is literally enforcing KYC voluntarily now. They found a bank to deal with EUR even outside EU's reach. They could literally ditch all regulations and continue using the currency. The EU has that little control over their own banking. Yet binance shows they have the upper hand here becsuse they continue to enforce regulations that make sense completely voluntarily and in good faith.

Well yeah these are my thoughts exactly. Georgia has been one of the countries in the caucuses trying to be buddy buddy with the EU because many people there feel wronged by Russia. But on the other hand many of their banks and a vast portion of the national wealth is still controlled by oligarchs who have a lot of interest to trade with both Russia and the EU. Surely one of the banks there at least would feel no problem doing something that the EU wouldn't like. Of course this could throw the country's EU accession down a bit, at least until the bank is strong armed to stop cooperating with binance. It's only a matter of time to see how fast EU acts.

@X-ray

I'm speculating the EU will act sooner or later because this regulation was long coming and the regulatory bodies as well as EU authorities  and institutions will look very weak if nothing is done to challenge those breaking their rules and soliciting EU clients.

What's the point of regulation if there's no enforcement after all? The EU tried to play it as if they won't let crypto businesses operate on their own anymore, claiming it was like the wild west without them. It's still going to be a wild west even with bank transactions it seems, but will they let it be so blatant still?

Well, Binance is no longer a startup trying to scale up; Europe is practically their backyard, and they undoubtedly have legal experts who understand alternative approaches to sidestep regulatory violations. Binance won't cross the line until MiCA develops rules capable of cornering them.


Remember back when Binance provided a backdoor to serve Chinese users on their platform?

Things in 2017 and 2026 are very different especially in legal and regulatory enforcement on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency industry. Remember that in the previous bear market, Changpeng Zao and Binance were sued by DOJ and they both had to pay expensive costs, while CZ individually had to spend months in jail.

It was less risky, more safer for Binance to operate in grey area in 2017 while in 2026 and coming years, they will have to obey to many existing and coming regulations. They can ignore governments in small nations but in the USA and a big region like Europe, they will not be able to do that without any legal cost.

It's interesting to see how Binance cope with MiCA in the Europe but I believe there will be less safe places for Binance moving around, and eventually they will have to do necessary things for coping with MiCA.

Their national benefit will be most important for their countries and politicians will not mind to change many things quickly if they can do that according to national constitutional power.

I am also certain that the European Union will act sooner or later because they must have anticipated that some companies would try to circumvent the law. If they don't act immediately, the MiCA law will be weakened and will encourage others to circumvent it.

But what legal action could the European Union take against Binance that would be effective enough? The only thing I would expect is for Binance to be prevented from accessing European banks or for its accounts to be blocked if it has bank accounts in the European Union.

They will act sooner or later as you said.

This is just another case of enforcement being too slow to punish the violators especially a corporation that have billions and willing to spend hundreds of millions to hire best lawyer to circumvent the regulation.

Even though I believe, with bloc-wide punishment, Binance wouldn't necessarily be out of business in EU, they recently hired two senior compliance executives and it's not for nothing.

Isn't providing the Binance APK application after it was banned by the European Union from Google play a violation? In addition, isn't providing transfer options via Georgia, which is not a member of the European Union, a direct exposure to European users?

As long as the end customer is a resident of the European Union, any financial system targeting them must comply with European laws, regardless of where the intermediary bank is located, whether in Georgia or elsewhere. Therefore, don't you think that Binance has violated the laws and tried to circumvent them?

Well binance was violating US laws until CZ got the book thrown at him so hard he had to pay a billion to bail himself out with a presidential person. The law is a bit subjective when things get to such a high profile.

Binance isn't going by the letter of the law and playing it safe here for sure. They want business to continue at any cost.
What is the EU going to do? Sit and watch? Pursue a judgment through courts trying to play it fair and maybe fine binance?
They can exert a lot of influence outside of th courts too, or even pursue a case against binance through the court they have the most influence to so they can establish some strict precedent.