It has been disclosed that CommEX, a cryptocurrency exchange that had previously assumed control of Binance’s activities in Russia following the latter’s decision to withdraw from the country, intends to terminate its operations in Russia.
The initial announcement of Binance’s exit from Russia was made in September 2023, and the company stated that the process would take around one year to finish.
CommEX Declares Operations Wind-Down
CommEX Russia announced in a post on X that the exchange will begin to progressively wind down operations beginning on March 25. However, the company did not provide any explanation for the decision being made.
The exchange will stop accepting new user registrations on March 25. Additionally, it will stop accepting deposits in both fiat currency and cryptocurrency. Asset transfers from Binance will also be halted. A gradual reduction in the number of opening positions for basic futures and futures trading will take place by the 28th of March. The deadline for the publication of new adverts on the peer-to-peer marketplace is five days from today, April 5.
Furthermore, by the 18th of April, all P2P orders and adverts will be automatically closed, and by the 23rd of April, all trading pairs on simple and classic futures will be automatically closed as well. After that, the spot market will be shut down by the 10th of May, at which point the official website will stop functioning, making it entirely inaccessible to users.
A one percent asset management fee will be applied to user accounts that still have assets beyond May 10, 2024, according to CommEX, which has confirmed this information. The exchange then recommended to its users that they close their holdings and withdraw their assets to wallets located outside of the exchange.
Pressure from Binance’s Regulators
When CommEX took over Binance’s Russian operations a month ago, local clients left for other platforms, and the exchange started to struggle. There was a 10% to 30% drop in its P2P trading activity. The daily volume of ruble P2P transactions on Binance was 7,700 at the start of 2023 and dropped to 6,300 by the middle of the year. By September, that figure had dropped to 3,400.
Binance, pulled the plug on its RUB services on January 30, 2024, marking the beginning of its withdrawal from the Russian market. The open spot orders linked to RUB have been closed. Additionally, Binance Pay and Binance Convert stopped supporting the RUB fiat currency option and withdrew all RUB trading pairings.
Binance was reportedly pushed out of Russia by American officials who accused the exchange of money laundering and sanctions evasion, according to Roman Nekrasov, co-founder of the ENCRY Foundation.
Furthermore, Binance had imposed other limitations on Russian users, including a $10,000 holding limit and a ruble transaction ban. But according to reports, the exchange made $2–4 billion a year from Russian consumers.
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