In the words of Noah Perlman, Binance's Chief Compliance Officer, “As we look toward the future, we recognise that operating in Russia is not compatible with Binance's compliance strategy.”
Binance has agreed to sell off its Russian business to the recently launched crypto exchange CommEx as the firm intends to quit the Russian crypto market.
In the press release, Binance reassured its Russian clients that it would cooperate with CommEx to provide an orderly process for their migration, noting it will take up to a year to off-board Russian clients.
According to Binance, a certain percentage of existing users who have completed the KYC process will be immediately moved to CommEx. This number is expected to increase over time as Binance will gradually shut down the rest of its exchange services and business lines in the coming months.
It is worth noting that Binance has refused to disclose the financial details of the deal, the company clarified that it will fully move out of Russia. In fact, Binance does not intend to buy back its shares or have ongoing revenue split from the deal.
Meanwhile, CommEx was launched earlier this week, with BTC/USDT and ETH/USDT trading pairs listed in spot trading. It supports P2P trading for Russian clients and plans to deploy fiat channels on its platform to allow users to exchange their Russian ruble holdings for Tether tokens.