Binance

Private

The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, serving over 200 million users globally, with aggressive regulated expansion into Latin America through dedicated entities in Mexico and Brazil and local currency pairs across the region.

Global (no fixed HQ) | Crypto Exchange | Est. 2017 | Website

At a Glance

Strength

200 million registered users and the world's deepest crypto order books give Binance liquidity advantages no competitor can match — in crypto, liquidity is a self-reinforcing network effect that is structurally very hard to dislodge.

Challenge

The 2023 DOJ settlement required Binance to pay $4.3 billion in penalties and accept ongoing monitoring — the compliance costs and operational constraints of this agreement are a persistent burden that no competitor faces.

Opportunity

Latin America's 55 million crypto users and 116% adoption growth in 2024 represent the world's fastest-growing addressable market for Binance — and Medá in Mexico and the Brazil broker-dealer license are the right vehicles to capture it compliantly.

Overview

Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao (CZ) and Yi He, and within two years became the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume — a position it has held continuously since. With over 200 million registered users, it dwarfs every competitor in the market it helped define.

The company's trajectory from 2017 to 2023 was defined by aggressive growth, regulatory evasion, and an almost deliberate avoidance of formal legal structure. That era ended in November 2023, when Binance agreed to a $4.3 billion settlement with the US Department of Justice, CZ resigned as CEO and pleaded guilty to AML violations, and Richard Teng — a career regulator and former head of Binance Singapore — took over as CEO. The post-settlement Binance is a different, more cautious company navigating a very different environment.

Latin America Strategy

LATAM has become one of Binance's most strategically important regions. The company appointed Guilherme Nazar as dedicated Head of Latin America and has pursued licensing aggressively across the region's two largest markets.

In Mexico, Binance launched Medá, a regulated Electronic Payment Funds Institution (IFPE) entity with a planned four-year investment of $53 million. Operating under Mexico's 2018 Fintech Law, Medá positions Binance to compete for financial inclusion customers in a market where smartphone penetration is high but formal banking remains inaccessible to tens of millions.

In Brazil, Binance secured its 21st global crypto license from the Central Bank — and received Brazil's first broker-dealer license granted to a crypto exchange, enabling it to acquire Sim;paul, a São Paulo investment platform. Brazil processed $90.3 billion in crypto transactions in 2024 and runs PIX, one of the world's most advanced instant payment systems with 63 billion transactions in 2024 alone.

In Colombia, Binance added Colombian peso trading pairs, bringing local currency access to a market that had previously required USD-denominated transactions.

LATAM Crypto Context

A Binance Research survey of over 10,000 crypto users in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico found that 95% plan to increase their crypto holdings in 2025. The drivers — inflation hedging, dollar savings demand, remittance cost reduction — are structural rather than speculative, making LATAM one of the world's most durable crypto adoption stories.

Post-Settlement Trajectory

Richard Teng's strategy is straightforward: convert regulatory risk into regulatory credibility, license by license. The pace of license acquisition — 21 jurisdictions by early 2025 — suggests the DOJ settlement, while costly, has been absorbed. Whether institutional trust follows the regulatory paper trail, or whether the governance questions from the CZ era linger, will determine Binance's ability to compete for the highest-value enterprise and institutional client segments.

Editorial Assessment

The Good, The Bad & Opportunities

The Good

200 million registered users and the world's deepest crypto order books give Binance liquidity advantages no competitor can match — in crypto, liquidity is a self-reinforcing network effect that is structurally very hard to dislodge.
The November 2023 DOJ settlement and CZ's guilty plea, while painful, removed existential regulatory uncertainty. Under Richard Teng's leadership, Binance has pursued an aggressive re-licensing strategy — 21 global licenses by early 2025 — that is gradually normalizing its regulatory standing.
Medá, Binance's regulated IFPE entity in Mexico with a $53M committed investment, is a serious attempt to win the region's largest unbanked market through regulatory legitimacy rather than the gray-area approach of earlier years.
Binance's 21st global crypto license, secured from Brazil's Central Bank in early 2025, plus the broker-dealer license enabling the Sim;paul acquisition, positions it as a fully regulated participant in Latin America's second-largest economy.
BNB Chain, Binance Pay, and the broader Binance ecosystem create product stickiness that pure exchanges lack — users who settle, stake, and pay with BNB have switching costs that retail traders do not.

The Challenge

The 2023 DOJ settlement required Binance to pay $4.3 billion in penalties and accept ongoing monitoring — the compliance costs and operational constraints of this agreement are a persistent burden that no competitor faces.
CZ's November 2023 guilty plea to AML violations and his April 2024 sentencing (four months in federal prison) cast a shadow over the company's governance that Richard Teng is still working to dispel with institutional and regulated counterparties.
Binance has no fixed legal headquarters — a deliberate structural choice that enabled regulatory arbitrage for years but now creates persistent uncertainty for institutional clients who need to understand counterparty jurisdiction.
The BNB token is both a key revenue driver and a systemic risk — BNB's value is deeply intertwined with Binance's health, creating a reflexive dynamic that can amplify stress during market downturns.
Aggressive global expansion into regulated markets requires enormous compliance teams and legal expenditures — the cost structure of a compliant, licensed Binance is fundamentally different from the cost structure of the entity that grew to dominance before 2023.

Opportunities

Latin America's 55 million crypto users and 116% adoption growth in 2024 represent the world's fastest-growing addressable market for Binance — and Medá in Mexico and the Brazil broker-dealer license are the right vehicles to capture it compliantly.
Stablecoin infrastructure for LATAM remittances is a multi-billion dollar opportunity that Binance's Pay product, P2P platform, and local currency pairs are positioned to address — particularly the Mexico-US corridor and the Argentina dollar savings market.
Binance Academy's reach (44 million learners globally in 2024, including partnerships with UNAM and Tecnológico de Monterrey) creates a top-of-funnel education pipeline in LATAM that will convert into platform users over the next five years.
As crypto regulation matures across LATAM, Binance's scale and re-licensing investment positions it to be the exchange of record for institutional and corporate clients who previously avoided crypto due to regulatory ambiguity.

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