- Binance Jersey is to shut down on November 30 after less than two years
- 40 jobs will go when the exchange closes its doors
- The GBP and EUR on/off ramp never took off, consistently recording low volume
Binance has announced that its Jersey operation is shutting down less than two years after opening. The office, which employs some 40 people, will close down at the end of November after the venture on the British-owned island didn’t pan out as expected. Binance Jersey has seen consistently low volume since its inception, and the imminent launch of Binance UK means that Binance Jersey’s role is all but redundant.
Binance Jersey Not “Next Big Step”
Binance announced Binance Jersey in June 2018, with CEO Changpeng Zhao stating at the time that the new office represented “the next big step in our global expansion strategy”, while CEO Tony Moretta said the new office would allow Binance to “provide a permissive sandbox for innovative crypto businesses to thrive without moving away from the general high standards of regulation that apply in our jurisdiction.”
Binance Jersey launched in January 2019, bringing GBP deposits and withdrawals to the UK for the first time. However, the platform suffered immediately from a lack of volume which has continued ever since – Binance Jersey recorded consistently less than $300,000 in 24hr volume, with less than half of that being BTC/GBP trading. This puts it in the low hundreds on the CoinMarketCap exchange ranking.
Binance UK Will Carry the Baton
Zhao took to Twitter to further explain the reason for the closure, claiming that the Binance parent site offered better fiat gateways:
The reason is: better fiat gateway already supported by https://t.co/ukvU1dD0G1.
No loss of features to users. https://t.co/NakZUER41u
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) October 19, 2020
Binance announced in June this year that a Binance UK launch was coming in 2020, which will take over GBP deposits and withdrawals from Binance Jersey. A launch date for Binance UK has yet to be announced, although it seems to have been pushed back from a summer launch.
