Despite announcing its full exit from Russia in 2023, cryptocurrency giant Binance continues to serve a select number of Russian clients.
A spokesperson confirmed that Binance maintains services for a limited group of existing users to ensure their digital assets remain secure.
This comes a year after Binance’s official statement declaring its exit due to concerns over regulatory compliance in Russia.
In September 2023, Binance sold its Russian operations to a new exchange called CommEx.
The decision to exit was tied to the firm’s commitment to global compliance standards. At the time, Noah Perlman, Binance’s chief compliance officer, stated that staying in Russia was “not compatible” with the exchange’s compliance strategy.
However, the company emphasized that even after the exit, it continues to adhere to global sanctions regulations and restrictions on sanctioned entities and individuals.
The exchange that took over Binance’s Russian operations, CommEx, announced it would cease operations by April 2024.
While CommEx remained relatively unknown, with no public details about its founders or key executives, it did acknowledge that some of its team members were former Binance Russia employees.
Despite denying direct ties to Binance, CommEx’s short-lived existence has raised questions about the full extent of Binance’s exit from the Russian market.
Meanwhile, Binance’s presence in Russia remains significant. The exchange’s Russian-language Telegram channel continues to have around 130,000 subscribers and updates about Binance’s new token listings and services are regularly shared with the community.
Although Russian users were informed that they could no longer trade on the platform, some services, such as Binance’s peer-to-peer (P2P) trading, remain accessible to Russians living outside the country, provided they can prove their residency.
Despite its official exit, Russia remains a notable market for Binance. Web analytics data from SimilarWeb shows that Russian traffic to Binance’s website dropped by 43% from August 2023 to July 2024, but the country still accounted for 6% of the exchange’s total website traffic during that period.
This puts Russia in a similar position to other major Binance markets like Turkey and Vietnam, which account for 8% and 6.6% of total traffic, respectively.
Binance has yet to clarify whether its significant web traffic from Russia or continued services to some Russian users indicate ongoing operations in the country.
The company maintains that it serves only a limited number of existing users and will communicate any plans.