Binance Australia was Notified Just 12 Hours Before Debanking
- Binance Australia’s regional manager said that his firm was notified just 12 hours before it was debanked.
- Rose said that around 1 million Australian customers were impacted by the debanking process.
- The firm suspended Australian dollar services a few weeks ago.
- Its payment provider, Zepto, was ordered to cease offering services to the crypto firm.
A war has been waged against Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, and the firm has been facing heavy pressure from regulators around the globe. Interestingly, as per a statement from a prominent executive at the Australian arm of the exchange, the firm was notified only 12 hours before the local banks stopped supporting the exchange’s operations.
According to a statement given to an audience by Binance regional manager Ben Rose at the Australian Blockchain Week on June 26, the debanking of the crypto trading platform affected around 1 million crypto investors in Australia as they were unable to withdraw their funds or deposit additional money.
“We received 24 hours’ notice of debanking at 11:30 pm in the evening; that was later turned into 12 hours, and so we had our banking cut off,” Rose said.
It was previously reported that Binance Australia suspended its Australian dollar services (AUD) after its payments provider, Zepto, was ordered by authorities to end support for the exchange via its partner banking and payments provider, Cuscal.
Rose further noted that “the reasons given were not entirely clear and didn’t look that great in the media.” While initially the customers were worried regarding the debanking of the crypto exchange, the Binance executive stated that “that tone changed pretty quickly” when it was confirmed that along with the firm, the wider crypto space was “impacted by these banking changes.”
While speaking to CoinTelegraph, Rose did not reveal much about Binance Australia’s hunt for another third party service provider for its trading platform. However, he did say that Cuscal “banks the majority of this industry.”
As per a previous report from BitcoinWisdom, Australia’s financial watchdog conducted a “targeted review” of Binance’s derivatives operations in the country after the exchange admitted it had wrongly classified some users in February this year.
Such actions from regulatory authorities in the region come at a time when crypto scams in Australia went up by 162% and investors lost about $148.3 million to these scammers. In an earlier statement, Rose noted that a major reason for debanking is crypto-related “scams and fraud.”
A crypto journalist with over 3 years of experience in DeFi, NFT, metaverse, etc. Parth has worked with major media outlets in the crypto and finance world and has gained experience and expertise in crypto culture after surviving bear and bull markets over the years.
