Key points to remember
- Binance suspends all deposits and withdrawals in British Pounds.
- The exchange already halted US dollar transfers last month.
- Binance says only 1% of its users will be impacted by the change.
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Just a month after stopping US dollar bank transfers, Binance is now forced to stop processing sterling deposits and withdrawals as well.
Only 1% of users affected
Crypto companies continue to struggle with their banking partners.
Binance, the world’s leading crypto exchange, will be to suspend Sterling deposits and withdrawals over the coming week. The changes have already gone into effect for new users, while existing users will have until May 22 before seeing the service shut down.
“Paysafe, our fiat partner that provides GBP deposit and withdrawal services via bank transfer and card to Binance users, has informed us that they will no longer be able to provide these services from May 22, 2023” , a Binance spokesperson told CoinDesk.
Last month, Binance announced that it would suspend US dollar deposits and withdrawals via wire transfers. The exchange said at the time that the suspension would only affect 0.01% of its monthly active users. This time around, he said the change to GBP would affect less than 1% of his users. The company said it is working to restart both services as soon as possible.
Binance’s suspension of GBP and USD transfers is likely due to banking issues. According to leading Bitcoin advocate Nic Carter, the US government may be trying to crack down on the crypto industry by cutting it off from the banking sector – a strategy Carter called Operation Choke Point 2.0. Carter says the scheme involves pressuring banking institutions to avoid providing their services to crypto companies on a “safe and sound” basis.
Despite these headwinds, Binance made during $504 billion in spot trading volume in February, more than 61% of the total market share.
Disclosure: At the time of writing this article, the author of this article owned BTC, ETH, and several other crypto assets.