Binance in talks for Malaysia licence after five-year absence - The Straits Times

Regulatory approval would provide Binance a route to formally re-enter a market where it has faced restrictions for more than five years.

Binance said it is in discussions with Malaysian regulators for a licensed business in the country, as the cryptocurrency exchange seeks a route back into a market where the authorities have blocked its website and applications.

“We have been jointly engaging the Securities Commission Malaysia and Bank Negara Malaysia over the last 10 months, on a licensed pathway to offering our products and services in Malaysia,” a Binance spokesperson told Bloomberg on Oct 31.

The world’s largest crypto exchange is in talks on the “viability and structure of a licensed business model in Malaysia”, the spokesperson added, declining to elaborate on the licence it was seeking. 

Regulatory approval would provide Binance with a route to formally re-enter a market where it has faced restrictions for more than five years.

The Securities Commission ordered Binance in July 2021 to cease operating in Malaysia after the regulator found it was illegally running a digital asset exchange.

The orders included stopping all media and marketing activities and restricting Malaysian investors from accessing Binance’s Telegram group.

While the Securities Commission had removed Binance from its Investor Alert List in 2024, it added the exchange back to the list earlier in October without providing a reason.

Binance suffered a security breach this week involving as much as US$6.3 billion (S$8 billion), the largest known crypto hack. It suspended withdrawals and pledged to cover all losses.

While the full details of the breach have yet to emerge, the incident comes amid growing concern about the risks posed by hackers in the age of artificial intelligence. 

Malaysian lawmaker Lim Guan Eng wrote to the Securities Commission in September, asking the regulator to probe whether Binance’s peer-to-peer (P2P) platform was facilitating ringgit transactions through advertisements listed under another currency denomination.

His office distributed the letter on Oct 31 “in the light of the recent Binance security incident”.

In response, Binance said it had voluntarily disabled a specific Papua New Guinea kina marketplace on its P2P platform that was unofficially pegged to the ringgit, as part of its engagement with the Securities Commission.

It said the latest complaint concerned an isolated advertisement by a non-Malaysian user on the Romanian leu marketplace, and that no other products on its platform were pegged to or served as substitutes for the ringgit.

“No platform, business or control mechanism can fully prevent bad actors determined to circumvent the rules of a marketplace,” the Binance spokesperson said.

“We take this seriously, but we do not believe an isolated case like this reflects any sustained effort to circumvent Malaysian law.”

Binance said it remained committed to working with the country’s regulators to bring its services to Malaysians in a compliant manner. BLOOMBERG