Binance users made $90 billion worth of transactions every month in China's banned market

The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, allowed customers from China to make transactions for about $90 billion every month, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In May 2023, Chinese clients traded over $90 billion worth of cryptocurrencies. Most of this volume was in crypto futures contracts. These transactions made Binance the largest crypto exchange in China, accounting for 20% of the global volume. To do this, Binance helped Chinese users bypass restrictions by inviting them to visit various websites with Chinese domain names before redirecting them to the global exchange.

According to current and former employees, the importance of China to Binance is openly discussed within the company. And despite the government's bans, the exchange is working closely with law enforcement in China to detect potential criminal activity among its more than 900,000 active users in the country.

In 2021, China expanded the industry's lockdown and declared all cryptocurrency-related transactions illegal. The motive was to maintain national security and social stability. At the time, Binance said it would take an inventory of platform users and put Chinese customer accounts into a "withdrawal only" mode, meaning they would be banned from trading.

As a result, Binance's stake in China has fallen to 17% of total trading volume at the end of 2021 from 24% in mid-year as a result, according to a former employee, as a result of the ban. But in 2022, it grew again and remained at a high level.

In addition, the journalists found out that Binance employees helped customers from China bypass compliance and verification. In total, the platform helped over 200,000 users to register, bypassing its own security system.

The platform even offered specialized mobile apps for customers in China. At the same time, a VPN was not required to download the application, since the download was carried out through the binance.com domain.