Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, says it intends to keep operating in the European Union despite a licensing setback, even as a one-week window to win authorization narrows.
Greece's financial regulator, the Hellenic Capital Market Commission, was set to reject Binance's application for a licence under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters in an exclusive report. The commission declined to comment, citing confidentiality.
"Binance is not leaving Europe," Gillian Lynch, the firm's head of Europe and the UK, told Reuters, adding that the exchange was weighing other routes to authorization: "If it is not Greece, I'm looking at other alternatives." Binance has also held talks with regulators in Ireland and Latvia, trendingtopics.eu reported.
What MiCA and a CASP licence mean
MiCA is the EU's first comprehensive rulebook for crypto, in force across the bloc. To serve EU clients, an exchange must obtain a crypto-asset service provider (CASP) licence from a single national regulator. That licence then carries "passporting" rights: approval in one member state allows a firm to operate in all 27 without applying separately in each, as the European Securities and Markets Authority describes the regime.
The pressure point is a transitional, or grandfathering, deadline. Firms operating under older national rules may continue only until July 1, 2026, or until they are granted or refused a MiCA licence, whichever comes first. Crucially, grandfathered firms do not get passporting rights unless they secure the full licence. Binance has said that without authorization from a European regulator before the deadline, it cannot keep serving EU-resident users from July 1, bit2me reported.
A regulator's concerns
European regulators have pointed to Binance's history: past penalties for money-laundering failures, a complex international structure, and what some viewed as a risk-taking culture, Reuters reported. Lynch countered that Binance now employs roughly 1,500 compliance staff and has no outstanding issues.
That history is substantial. In November 2023, Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to U.S. criminal charges, with the company agreeing to pay more than $4.3 billion to resolve anti-money-laundering, unlicensed money-transmitting and sanctions violations, the U.S. Justice Department said. Zhao paid a $50 million fine and stepped down as CEO; he was pardoned by President Donald Trump in October 2025.
What is at stake
The episode tests MiCA's single market. Some firms have cleared the bar: payments provider OpenPayd recently secured a MiCA licence to offer stablecoin services across the European Economic Area on one authorization, a deal Boursel has covered. For Binance, a refusal in Greece would not by itself bar it from later seeking approval elsewhere — France has been cited as a possible route, though no formal application has been filed. Until then, the largest exchange in crypto faces an uncertain path to the EU's roughly 450 million consumers.
