back to article Tough luck, Brits: Binance suspends UK deposits and withdrawals

The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange has just become a bit smaller as Binance will suspend deposits and withdrawals in pounds for customers in the United Kingdom. The move comes as a response to a decision by its UK payment processor Paysafe, which said it was terminating its embedded wallet solution for customers, and …

  1. JimmyPage

    Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

    I've just asked a few grown ups I know, and no one (a) is affected, or (b) gives a shit.

    If you are still imagining that "crypto" is somehow investing in 2023, then perhaps I can direct you to my new venture, "Magic Beans" ?

    1. b0llchit Silver badge
      Alert

      Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

      Please tell me more about your "Magic Beans" venture.

      There seems to be an allure to the words that could well maybe surely cause a run on your product and subsequently make it quite valuable. It will feed the world because beans feed the world. It will also multiply because beans are magical and multiplying.

      Where do I deposit my money?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

        Wow beans??? You mean you have vegetables? Real green vegetables? Did you smuggle them across the Irish sea? Anyway, sign me up, I can stand outside Waitrose in my trench coat muttering 'beans...want beans...' at passing Range Rovers and make a killing...

      2. Glenn Amspaugh
        Mushroom

        Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

        Real 'bros don't use corporate-gov fiat concepts like money but rather magic crypto numbers to buy magic beans.

        Get with thuh times!

    2. Bebu

      Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

      "Magic Beans"

      Didn't Jack come down the beanstalk better off than when he went up?

      Too long ago and too many other fairy stories since then :)

      Never did understand why a giant would want to eat an Englishman - I would have thought a pretty bland viand.

      Surely an Italian or Frenchman would be a tastier morsel?

      1. sebacoustic

        Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

        The giant never said that. He just said he'd smelled "the blood of an Englishman" and pronounced his intention to eat him.

        Had he smelled any other nationals, he _might have_ eaten those by preference.

      2. Aladdin Sane

        Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

        “And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy anymore. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after, without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done...which proves that you can be excused for just about anything if you are a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.”

        ― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

      3. M.V. Lipvig Silver badge

        Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

        "Didn't Jack come down the beanstalk better off than when he went up?"

        Yes. JACK was better off. Everyone behind him, not so much.

    3. Sp1z

      Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

      I'm loving that (as of right now) two "cryptobros" are butthurt by your post

      1. Jazzwhistle

        Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

        Not loving that anyone who thinks that a trillion dollar industry that is growing every year with thousands of the worlds top devs and hundreds if not thousands of scientific research papers demonstrating how it can (and is already) solving real world problems (e.g self-sovereign digital identity/privacy, supply chain logistics, decentralized finance/storage/computing, tokenisation of physical assets etc.) can be written of as just "magic beans", and that anyone who disagrees should be insulted by reducing them to a "cryptobro".

        I'm not saying idiotic speculation on poorly designed software doesn't exist (e.g LUNA), but mocking and ignoring the entire space of distributed ledger technology because of a few very vocal gamblers is short-sighted, narrow-minded and unscientific.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Just because blockchain can, doesn't mean blockchain should.

          But is it solving real world problems? Most of the 'applications' that people have tried to shill in my large but niche industry have generally been 'You know those not-complex records of contracts that you have kept on paper since the 1800s and on computers since the 1960s? Why go to all the trouble and bother of filling in a form and sending it to the regulator, and them filing the paper just in case and adding a line to an Oracle database? Why not pay us to invent a new form and then blockchain something blockchain, and then somehow the world will be a better place'. Just because blockchain can, doesn't mean blockchain should.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Just because blockchain can, doesn't mean blockchain should.

            It does make buying weed off the dark web easier. Just saying. So I heard.

        2. Jellied Eel Silver badge

          Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

          I'm not saying idiotic speculation on poorly designed software doesn't exist (e.g LUNA), but mocking and ignoring the entire space of distributed ledger technology because of a few very vocal gamblers is short-sighted, narrow-minded and unscientific.

          So I have a ton of money. That'd be approximately $100m in $100 bills. So the SVB bank run done the old fashioned way would have needed 420 tons of paper re-distributed. Hmm.. isn't there some wealthy person who likes 420? Anyway.. $1bn in $100 bills is also approx 1129.2195m^3 so SVB would have needed 47,427m^3 in storage space. Or more, if customers wanted smaller bills. I guess this is why rich people like large vehicles. Or $42bn is-

          100111000111011001010010010000000000

          which is much easier to store, even when you add bits for currency code. Snag is SVB, being part of the fictional.. I mean fractional reserve banking system didn't have $42bn in either phsyical or virtual bits, especially when people wanted their bits NOW!. And the dollars it did have weren't worth the dollars it's customer's wanted.

          Which has kinda got me warming to the idea of crypto. So I wander into a bank and say I'd like to open an account and I have $1bn to deposit. They'd say.. No you don't. Unless I had some trucks outside, or a wire facility with some other trusted(hah!) bank that says I do have that money. Which kinda forces me into relying on the banking system, even though events have shown that banking system can't always be trusted. Then again, nor can alternatives, like funny stories of rats chewing up and nesting in large bales of dirty money*.

          Snag is we can't currently really trust crypto either, especially when it's value compared to traditional currencies floats like a paper boat down a storm drain. So I'm kinda liking the idea of a CBDC or even a 'BritCoin' where my $1 or £1 is worth what it says it is, there's a decentralised ledger, and for cash, I don't need a bank. Ish. Unless of course I'm a Candian trucker or maybe an extreme MAGA Republican and The Bank decides that my money is now their money. Other banks may not like the idea because it's kinda hard to do the fractional thing when you no longer have customer's deposits to gamble with.

          *Research project for bored economists. Calculate the volume of a typical rats nest, and value if said nest is inside a cube of $100 bills. Then compare cost of rat's home to say, California or NY residential property prices. How comparable are the property values between both sets of rats?

          1. the spectacularly refined chap Silver badge

            Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

            Is that really what your insight comes down to? Essentially, I can write it down, so I may as well consider myself to own it?

            SVB fell because it invested in T-bills in a declining bond market. It seems you could rather they had invested in a notepad and a pencil with which to write all those zeroes.

            1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

              Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

              SVB fell because it invested in T-bills in a declining bond market.

              Nope. It fell because people needed somewhere to store 1s and 0s. It didn't have enough of those. It did have enough assets, but at the time people demanded their non-binary money, the securities SVB had were worth less than the dollar value printed on them. Then the fix was to make a bunch of banks (indirectly) lend SVB >$42bn with a $25bn backstop. If SVB had been successful at raising finance earlier, the banks that have now been forced to bail it out might have prevented the bank failing. At least on that day. But then they'll probably make money picking over the carcass, providing they're not left with any of the debt SVB was forced to take on to cover the run.

              Banking is weird like that.

              So my point was that if you had a safe, reliable way to store cash, you wouldn't need to deposit it in a bank. I guess this is why art has become so expensive as a Picasso potentially offers more security and portability than a stack of T-Bills.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

            I think it's worth repeating that the only reason people were able to get their money back in Japan, after FTX went where it belonged, was exactly because of the regulations that crypto is so keen to avoid.

            Now, if you add regulation to crypto you're in principle in the same structure as you seem to dislike.

            That said, of course if you dial back that oversight because you're in bed with the bankers you get something like SVB,, but even there the main problem is not the bank itself, but the perception of it which caused a run on the bank (and on others) because people only then actually realised that less regulation means more risk. Take Credit Suisse, for instance, which is presently also not doing so great - it actually HAS enough assets but shareholders are presently keeping it in a bad light because it allows them to renegotiate their position and get an even bigger share of the bank before they pump money back in. The only reason they're staying away from the 10% limit is because that introduces new controls, but they have plenty other resources that can buy in as allegedly "separate" entities, which is what the real play is. Just keep watching it - you'll see it soon enough. It's not exactly the first time it happened, that's why regulators try to weed out dodgy business before things go wrong.

            Let me translate that: you now see a whole bank being manipulated by people who have a Godawful amount of real money, and it's still hard work because of all those pesky government eyeballs that you have to deceive (or pay off, depending on which country you're in). If you want to manipulate the value of crypto, however, you can do just the same, just that you need a less larger holding for it and enough followers to believe every word you tweet. Even easier if you own Twitter, of course, and so you can pump and dump all you want without pesky regulators interfering.

            Until you want to cash in, that is.

            That's what's happening with Binance in the UK right now - all of a sudden, the whole money laundering and pump and dump thing has bumped into regulations..

        3. iron

          Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

          > solving real world problems

          Name one actual instance of a blockchain in production that is solving a real world problem. Hell, solving any problem - real, virtual or completely fake.

          You can't because there isn't one.

          Databases do it better. (hmm... sounds like a T-shirt slogan)

          1. MrGreen

            Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

            When all the banks closed in Ukraine when the war started what do you think was still working?

            People were buying things with Bitcoin.

            People could also flee the country immediately and still have access to funds once they reached another country.

            Oppressed people and people in countries who don’t trust their banks also use Bitcoin as currency.

            People who can’t get a bank account use Bitcoin.

            1.7 billion people don’t have a bank account but Bitcoin allows them to become their own bank.

            I think these are good examples of blockchain solving very important problems.

            1. Alumoi Silver badge

              Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

              Until they need to exchange their bitcoin to real money to buy a loaf of bread.

              1. MrGreen

                Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

                Easy.

                Peer to Peer

                PayPal

                Lightening Network

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

              > When all the banks closed in Ukraine when the war started what do you think was still working?

              Did they? Do you have a reference for that? The IMF says otherwise.

              https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2022/12/20/cf-how-ukraine-is-managing-a-war-economy

              Anecdotally, I know 2 Ukrainians in Kiev who are living in fear but otherwise have access to money, food, services as before. Their cousin, who lives on my street since before the war can send birthday present money without an issue. They aren't using Bitcoin.

              The 1.7bn people in the world without a bank account are in a cash economy because they are poor. They are not using Bitcoin.

              So that's two things your believe that are demonstrably false, any real real world problems?

              1. MrGreen

                Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

                So you supplied no evidence other than the corrupt IMF?

                Oh I believe you then.

                1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

                  Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

                  So you supplied no evidence other than the corrupt IMF?

                  "Whereas I have unsubstantiated claims, so you should believe me."

        4. Arthur the cat Silver badge
          Devil

          Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

          Not loving that anyone who thinks that a trillion dollar industry that is growing every year with thousands of the worlds top devs and hundreds if not thousands of scientific research papers demonstrating how it can (and is already) solving real world problems (e.g self-sovereign digital identity/privacy, supply chain logistics, decentralized finance/storage/computing, tokenisation of physical assets etc.) can be written of as just "magic beans", and that anyone who disagrees should be insulted by reducing them to a "cryptobro".

          Looks like GPT-4 is still capable of hallucinating.

        5. cyberdemon Silver badge
          Coffee/keyboard

          Where's the vomit icon? This'll have to do..

          > solving real world problems (e.g self-sovereign digital identity/privacy, supply chain logistics, decentralized finance/storage/computing, tokenisation of physical assets etc.)

          You've just spent ~400 TWh of electricity (about £80bn worth of electricity at current UK prices and ~200 Million tonnes CO2) on picking random numbers with low SHA-1 values.

          I'd say you are causing a real-world problem with your imaginary one.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Where's the vomit icon? This'll have to do..

            There's really no need...

            https://cointelegraph.com/news/the-merge-brings-down-ethereum-s-network-power-consumption-by-over-99-9

            1. Nifty

              Re: Where's the vomit icon? This'll have to do..

              Proof-of-stake, guessed it before I opened the page. The idea is as old as Blockchain and not liked by all.

            2. cyberdemon Silver badge
              Mushroom

              Re: Where's the vomit icon? This'll have to do..

              Even if you fix the power consumption, cryptocurrency is orders of magnitude more useful for extortion, Money Laundering and market manipulation than anything else.

              It's a bit like ChatGPT et al in that regard. There are lots of academics trying to research "AI for Good", but that's only because this is a very hard problem to answer, so it is worthy of an academic paper if you can find one tiny edge-case where it might be useful for something good. Any idiot can give you dozens of extremely productive ways to use AI for Bad.

              Same goes for research into novel uses for Toxic Waste.. Just because there is a lot of research going in to how we can make some good of this pile of crap, doesn't make it good.

        6. heyrick Silver badge

          Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

          "Not loving that anyone who thinks that a trillion dollar industry that is growing every year"

          The industry part seems to be attempts to magic money out of thin air. It's rather like advertising in that respect, but at least with advertising you know that at least some eyeballs had to put up with viewing the ill-considered shit that was foisted upon them.

          "with thousands of the worlds top devs"

          Probably not a surprise, though call me cynical at "thousands". There's a load of really complex maths involved and some people enjoy that sort of thing.

          "and hundreds if not thousands of scientific research papers demonstrating how it can (and is already) solving real world problems"

          Meaningless. There's hundreds if not thousands of papers saying the same sorts of things about quantum mechanics and yet we're not really that much further along than a decade or so ago. It seems to be rather easy to tout for funding for "research" when one can blather good sounding things about barely understood (by normal people) concepts.

          "(e.g self-sovereign digital identity/privacy, supply chain logistics, decentralized finance/storage/computing, tokenisation of physical assets etc.)"

          Because, of course, absolutely none of this existed and/or was a mostly solved problem before cryptocurrency became a thing.

          "can be written of as just "magic beans""

          When Bitcoin got "old" and less valued, along came something else (Ethereum?). It's a cycle that will rinse and repeat.

          I'd be interested to know if people around here have actually made decent amounts with crypto mining and such, because it's one thing to have half a mil in a digital wallet, and another thing to get that translated into cold hard cash. To me, it seems like far to much a massive Ponzi scheme that relies upon everybody else buying into the delusion (hmm, yet another parallel with advertising).

        7. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

          But what is the use of a "currency" if it is only of any use once you convert it back to a real currency to actually spend it. You can't buy things with it. Even when people accept it, the transactions are too slow and you have no idea minute to minute what it is worth.

          It is a value store, not a currency. Unfortunately the value in the store has literally nothing behind it other than the belief that you can sell it to another mug for more actual money.

          If someone came up to you in the street and asked "Would you like to buy some of this money I just invented? No there is nothing backing it, but you can sell it other people for more dollars/pounds/yen/whatever!" you wouldn't do it, so why does the currency being crypto make it any different, apart from the appalling waste of energy?

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

      It affects me, but only a bit. I still have about 0.0001BTC in an account there.

      Not that I was ever intentionally investing in bitcoin. I bought one for about £70 years ago with the intention of buying drugs from the Silkroad, but never got around to it.

      Then a few years later I realised that I still had 1 BTC which was now worth £700, so I spent about half of it on a new graphics card. A few years after that, I realised that the 0.5 I had left was now worth loads again, so I upgraded my computer again, and so on.

      I've paid for about three or four upgrades this way, so I'm not that bothered that I've technically got about £100 in Binance that I can't access. I suppose I should probably check how much is left and how much it's 'worth' now.

      1. tony72

        Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

        You can still access your £100 worth, just you can't directly withdraw cash to your bank account if you sell it. You could transfer out to another exchange, or to e.g. PayPal, or spend it directly (buy your next upgrade from scan.co.uk).

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Well certainly putting the "bin" in binance then

      Not magic Beenz? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beenz.com

  2. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Trollface

    "a prudent decision on our part taken in an abundance of caution"

    So, not the usual decision-making process, then ?

    Did you have an excess of caution in your reserves to use ?

    And don't you just love being part of the "less than" 1% ?

    1. Zippy´s Sausage Factory
      Devil

      Re: "a prudent decision on our part taken in an abundance of caution"

      I thought the "abundance of caution" was on PaySafe's part, non Binance's. If not, I guess it deserves an award for "euphemism of the week".

  3. tony72

    Not a surprise

    Most UK banks, even the crypto-friendly ones, have been blocking transactions with Binance for years, due I believe to past regulatory issues, so this is not that surprising. I'm guessing Binance had very few options available for servicing UK bank transfers.

    Strange how Binance manages to work with regulators in some countries but not in others; they recently got licensed in Singapore, for example, which is quite a strict regulatory regime, yet here in wannabe-crypto-hub UK, they are in the doghouse.

    1. Sudonym
      Stop

      Re: Not a surprise

      My bank suspended transactions to Binance a couple of years ago.

      I did briefly dabble in it, but we're talking amounts of £20-30 at a time. However, by the time my bank had suspended transactions I'd already taken everything out.

      I reckon my bank did me a service, stopping me from having any future temptations.

  4. chivo243 Silver badge
    Meh

    I wonder

    If the Binance adverts I've been barraged with in a free game I use will stop? For the past two weeks or so, it's almost exclusively the only ad... I get it in French, German and English...

    No icon for Huh... I guess Meh has to do it.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    too challenging

    well, at least we reaped while the sun shone, etc.

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: too challenging

      Indeed, I wanted to see what the fuss was about, so I set uo a little miner whirring away in my garage and forgot about for over a year.

      Then the bitcoin surge happened and I eventually remembered the thing when a fan bearing wore out and it started to rattle, discovered I had many thousands worth of the bitcoin. Which I promptly

      flogged and am now laughing at myself for being one of those fools that the people that missed the boat like to bang on about

  6. nautica Silver badge
    Meh

    Who'da thought...?

    So, another just one more CryptoScam fiasco.

    "There's a sucker born every minute."--Phineas T. Barnum

    1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

      Re: Who'da thought...?

      "There's a sucker born every minute."--Phineas T. Barnum

      And the world population has quadrupled since he said it, so we're down to every 15 seconds by now.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Who'da thought...?

        .. and they really need them in certain countries to vote themselves into perpetual poverty, which is why they banned abortion.

        And after that vote they'll double up as targets so sales of guns and ammo remain stable.

        /s

  7. Plest Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Doesn't bother most people

    Shouldn't think anyone over 21 really cares as they have more sense than to invest in this cesspit.

    Binance produced that laughable audit statement about 12 months ago where Binance themselves dictated the terms of the audit they would follow. What a sham! Binance also recently caught the eye of the US regulators after FTX when titsup, so grab some more popcorn looks like another shady crypto about to explode and cue much hand wringing and whinging by suckers who think you can make money from nothing but thin air.

  8. IGotOut Silver badge

    Stopped dealing in the UK

    ...due to regularity issues

    Translation ""They have noticed our Ponzi scheme, so we're getting the hell out of town"

  9. Howard Sway Silver badge

    the UK regulatory environment in relation to crypto is too challenging

    Just wondering why you're finding regulations that say you must have sufficient deposits to cover customers withdrawal requests "too challenging". Please go into further detail, specifically as to whether you actually have less money than was deposited. What's that, you don't have to tell us that because you're not regulated? Well, let's see if anyone who's still not withdrawn their cash can work out why you don't want to tell them the answer.

  10. Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells

    This isn't the same as a bank run. You can still transfer your bitcoin/whatever to another exchange if you want to sell them.

    1. Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells
      Facepalm

      To the person that down-voted that comment: just because you don't like crypto doesn't make factual statements that aren't anti-crypto bad.

      In a bank run there is no way to get your money out because the bank doesn't hold the deposits to give everybody their money back. The bank is illiquid. It doesn't have the money to return to depositors.

      In this case, Binance is changing payment provider so there will be ( temporarily? ) no way to sell your coins and withdraw cash. However Binance is not illiquid. You can withdraw your Bitcoin/whatever, you just can't withdraw money.

  11. Tron Silver badge

    Government crackdowns.

    They will all eventually ban crypto, anything Chinese, and then demand that websites are domestic and licensed, content is checked, ban purchasing from foreign sites, and then ban access to foreign sites.

    Because of national security, and to protect the children. Absolutely not because they are a bunch of fascists taking back control of their tribes.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    HODL.....? Anyone ????

    ahahahahahahahahaha

    i knew it. oh well there goes £600 in spurious furlough gambling up in smoke.

    Enjoi it China. your economy is going off a cliff, again. and taking all the rest of the world with it.

    and you all wondered where the CCP/CN had invested overseas at.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    separate

    "The separate nature of Binance and Binance.us has been a hot topic for US regulators, and recently revealed messages between Binance leadership reveal the subsidiary may not be entirely independent."

    Oh, you mean, like Alameda and FTX were "separated" ? Like, run by the same gang, one pumping gullible idiots and the other "borrowing", aka, spending the money for luxury goods/flats for the same gang ?

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