Binance US suffered a number of setbacks from regulators earlier this summer, to the point where it was no longer able to offer dollar (USD) deposits to its customers. But the platform has just announced a new partnership with Moonpay, which changes all that. However, things are not going back to the way they were for the platform
Binance finds a new partner for dollar payments
Announced last night, this on-ramp to the dollar is effective immediately. This means that Binance US customers can once again deposit USD, and then exchange them for cryptocurrencies, in this case Tether’s USDT. The Moonpay platform in particular will provide this service for Binance, but the company also mentions that it is using ancillary service providers.
Today, we’re excited to introduce a new $USD on-ramp!
✔️ Buy $USDT on https://t.co/AZwoBOgsqS through payment partners like @moonpay, which supports debit & credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.
✔️ Sell USDT for USD to withdraw via bank transfer.
Learn more & get started ⤵️
– Binance.US (@BinanceUS) August 22, 2023
This does not mean, however, that Binance is once again becoming a crypto-fiat platform: trades made on the platform will still be strictly in crypto-currencies:
“As Binance US completes its transition to becoming a crypto-only exchange, we have replaced USD with USDT, a stablecoin backed by the US dollar, which becomes our new base asset for trading. “
Binance US remains a crypto platform without fiat exchanges
Contrary to what we read here and there, Binance US therefore still does not offer a way to deposit USD directly, or exchange them for cryptocurrencies. It is the USDT that is becoming the reference asset on Binance (eclipsing the last hopes of renewed interest in the BUSD).
What this also means is that US regulators have effectively forced the platform to become ‘crypto-only’, a status that is less onerous to manage in terms of regulations. What’s more, they have stifled the ambitions of the BUSD, which Binance was once counting on to fuel its empire.
Last June, Binance’s US lawyers warned of the company’s survival after it came under heavy attack from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Will the platform manage to get through this period of doubt? The coming months will tell.
