Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange Binance is opening an office in Beijing, two sources with knowledge of the matter told CoinDesk. The new outpost will join Binance’s current mainland China office in Shanghai.
It’s not clear what exactly the office will do or when it will open, but the move follows a slew of announcements from Chinese authorities, including President
Xi Jinping outlining China’s new blockchain ambitions.
Relations between Binance leadership and Chinese authorities appear to have warmed recently, with the exchange publishing a report on China’s plans for a
digital fiat currency over the summer and Binance CEO
Changpeng Zhao stating this week on Twitter that he believes the Chinese central bank is having a positive impact on the crypto industry. This comes just one year after China’s censorship firewall
blocked access to the Binance website.
These days, Binance executives have publicly stated the exchange is working with
multiple governments on an upcoming stablecoin project called Venus. Binance co-founder and chief marketing officer Yi He told
Bloomberg that Binance will help governments “fully supervise” the cryptocurrency industry through such projects to ensure “stable, sustainable development.”
Although Zhao grew up in Canada, he was born in China and worked at the China-based exchange OkCoin before founding his own empire. Binance made its first investment in a Chinese crypto company,
Mars Finance, last September. Many of the exchange’s earlier investors hail from the Chinese tech industry, including
Black Hole Capital and Funcity Capital.
Zhao
added via Twitter on Tuesday that Binance currently sees a “few million dollars a day” worth of volume from Chinese users, especially via the
peer-to-peer functionality that became available in
China earlier this month. However, an increased focus on serving
Chinese users doesn’t inherently mean the company is working with authorities on products or services beyond the Venus stablecoin project and compliance efforts.
“I don’t have anything that’s not public,” Zhao said in the Twitter
video, referring to Chinese government strategies, adding:
“All of my readings are from public sources.”
CoinDesk reached out to Binance for comment and will update the article if we hear back.
Wolfie Zhao contributed reporting.