Binance US to launch in “coming weeks” says CEO

Binance US, the American expansion of crypto exchange giant Binance will launch in the “coming weeks”, according to CEO Catherine Coley.

Binance US is essentially the same Binance but with the approval of US regulators. Binance never officially operated in the US–but US citizens could still access the service–and has cracked down on US users who still accessed the exchange, in order to appease regulators. 

The outpost will be operated by BAM Trading Services—a newly launched company with little information known about it—and run by Coley, who was previously an executive at Ripple. 

As part of the deal with regulators, customers will have to pass stringent know-your-customer (KYC) checks to use the exchange. New accounts will require a valid government ID and a social security number. 

In a blog post August 9, Binance US said that it’s considering listing 30 tokens on its exchange, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Binance’s native token, BNB. 

Binance US is still finalizing the list of states it’ll be available in, but we know that it won’t be available in New York since it doesn’t have a BitLicense–the necessary, and expensive, license to operate there. As soon as Binance US finishes working out which states can access the exchange, it will open up KYC onboarding a few days before the launch so that customers can deposit cryptocurrencies and open accounts. 

The news follows the launch of US-dollar-pegged stablecoin BUSD Thursday. BUSD has been created in partnership with Paxos, and is backed by the New York Department of Financial Services. BUSD will start trading on both Paxos’ and Binance’s exchanges sometime this month.