Russian Binance customers switch to other platforms

Following Binance’s exit from Russia, some users switched to new platforms rather than adopting the CommEX exchange as an alternative. At the same time, overall trading activity in the country declined significantly. This is reported by «Коммерсант».

In an interview with the publication, Satoshkin’s CEO Dmitry Stepanin said that the P2P segment was the hardest hit. According to professional traders, the volume of peer-to-peer trades fell by 10-30%.

According to P2P.Army, at the start of 2023 the number of active ruble P2P orders on Binance stood at 7,700. By summer the figure had fallen to 6,300, and by September to 3,400. 

Stepanin added that users are primarily moving to Bybit, which “has been very active in marketing recently.” Huobi, Bitget, KuCoin, Gate.io also report inflows of new customers from Russia.

There are a very large number of users from Russia registered on Binance. But everyone will have a personal choice: join us or try their luck with another platform,” said CommEX CEO Anton Toropets.

According to the head of the new crypto exchange, inflows to the platform will total about 1 million people. Meanwhile, financial analyst Andrey Barkhota noted that Binance had registered only 700,000 Russian clients.

The transition to CommEX will be staged and will take up to a year in total.

Co-founder of ENCRY Foundation Roman Nekrasov believes that the main reason for Binance’s exit from the country is pressure from American regulators. Earlier the exchange had been suspected of facilitating money laundering and violating international sanctions.

Earlier, in late September, CEO Changpeng Zhao said that several former regional team members of the exchange could join CommEX or had already done so. The company also waived the right to buy back the Russian business in the future.

Later in CommEX admitted that there were former Binance employees on the staff who helped develop the platform.