Already this summer Binance will start offering customers in the United Kingdom a possibility to buy and trade digital assets with the pound sterling and euro.
Binance, the blockchain company behind the largest cryptocurrency exchange, has announced that it plans to launch its service dedicated to serving the UK market.
According to Wednesday’s release by the company, the planned launch would enable customers in the United Kingdom to buy and trade digital assets with the pound sterling and euro.
The company had earlier launched BinanceUS dedicated to U.S. users to avoid collision with regulators. The Binance for the UK will have the UK watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) oversee compliances with financial regulatory guidelines.
Binance to Expand Its Services to UK
Interest in investment in digital assets has increased in recent times. Binance announced that the UK platform will cater for retail and institutional investors. A recent study by Fidelity shows that 80% of policymakers in financial corporations believe that digital assets are an appealing class of investment instruments. One-third of 800 participants have already invested in such assets.
According to the release seen on the company’s website, Binance UK will take off with 65 digital assets made available for trading. Users will be able to buy and sell these assets through their bank accounts using direct transfers. This will be facilitated by the Single Euro Area Payment Network and the UK Faster Payment Platform.
A Reuters report quoted the Binance UK director Teana Baker-Tay saying that:
“Interest and participation in the UK digital asset markets is growing; not just in-depth with its current participants, but also in breadth.”
She said that the company is making it easy for investors with varying degrees of risk tolerance to participate in the industry as it evolves. She added that investment options such as staking and passive income yielding packages are offered by Binance.
The company has been involved in joint venture partnerships with global partners in countries such as the U.S., Uganda, Korea, Singapore and Jersey. This has facilitated the company’s growth as a fiat-to-crypto trading platform in those countries. The UK is the latest addition to the list of fiat-crypto enabled countries.
Increasing Institutional Involvement
Binance reported that its institutional investors have increased. Its Q1 report shows a 47.7% increase from the same quarter of 2019. It stated that this reflected in the volume traded by such investors, observing 113% increase in its spot market transactions from the previous quarter while its futures volume spiked by 217%.
The June 17 announcement that Binance would launch a trading platform in the UK came a month after the company appointed Baker-Taylor as its UK director. She was a former executive of Coinfloor. The company’s spokesperson said that Binance UK would offer spot market services and that there is no plan to add derivative products.
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