Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, is facing another major departure: Leon Foong, head of the Asia-Pacific region, recently resigned. The previous month, Binance had already suffered the departure of 3 senior executives, as it continues to lose market share.
Another major departure at Binance
Here’s a piece of information that should a priori have remained confidential and that won’t do Binance any good: after losing 3 senior executives last month, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange has seen the head of the Asia-Pacific region resign.
According to exclusive information from Bloomberg, Leon Foong had been in charge of Binance’s expansion in South Korea, Thailand and Japan, where the exchange started trading at the beginning of August. Last month, Hon Ng (Binance’s general counsel), Steven Christie (head of compliance) and Patrick Hillmann (head of strategy) bid farewell to the platform.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said that replacements had been put in place and that Patrick Hillmann had been forced to leave for purely personal reasons.
While the market share of Binance US, its American subsidiary, has almost been eclipsed by its competitors Kraken and Coinbase following its disputes with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Asia and the Far East are a prime location for its international development.
In Europe, Binance’s position is not particularly straightforward either: the cryptocurrency exchange is under investigation in France and was forced to leave the Netherlands for failing to register. At the same time, Binance withdrew its application for a licence on the German market last month, and is currently facing regulatory hurdles in Canada, Belgium and Australia.
A spokesperson for Binance did not wish to provide any further information about this news.
Binance losing momentum
Binance has seen its market share plummet in the wake of its various regulatory concerns. While the cryptocurrency exchange platform dominated the market by a wide margin with 63.68% share in February 2023, this share has fallen by almost 20% to just under 46%
Monthly market shares of the main cryptocurrency exchanges
Currently, most of Binance’s activity takes place in China (although the exchange has denied this), followed by South Korea, Turkey and Vietnam.
Beyond the geographical impact of its various worries with regulators, Binance has also found itself forced to abandon its stablecoin BUSD in favour of the First Digital USD (FUSD), launched last June and listed last month on the crypto exchange
