Binance Needs A Friend in The European Union

**David Canellis** (0:00)
Welcome back to The Breakdown, everybody. I'm your host, David Canellis, as always. This morning, we're looking at a few quick stories that are hanging around from last week that are yet to be resolved. We chatted a lot about strategy in Sailor and Bitcoin last week, but there's a lot of other things happening in crypto that warrant some attention. Number one, we're looking at Binance versus the EU and its quest to be regulated under the MICA set of rules and regulations for exchanges and VASPs, as they like to be called in Europe. We're looking at the latest on that. We're also going to be chatting about ChatGPT 5.6 and Mythos with the US. The US is really putting a stranglehold on the latest and greatest models coming out of the two big frontier labs. So checking in on the latest on those. And also Facebook is getting into prediction markets, not just building its own prediction markets that doesn't really seem like it's for cash right now. It's for like points or something or like funny money, but also it really wants to cut deals with Kaoshi and Polymarkets. So I'm wondering what the Zuck is really up to. And again, if it's just too late to the meta already, so to speak.
All right. Okay. Enough out of me. Let's just get into it. This is The Breakdown.
Nothing to serve on The Breakdown is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are opinions, not financial advice. Hosts and guests may hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed. Okay, so European Binance users are being urged to take their funds and assets and everything else off of the platform. Binance, this is from The Financial Times on Friday. Binance has told its customers in the EU that it will stop providing services to them from next week, because it will not be licensed to operate in the region in a significant setback for the world's biggest crypto exchange. So these rules come into effect from July 1, which is on Wednesday. And I mean, Binance would have had to secure licensing from at least one EU member state before that January 1st deadline. But unfortunately, it hasn't been able to do that. Binance's application had tried going through Greece. Binance's application in Greece for a block wide license was rejected last week, less than a fortnight before the deadline comes into force and the exchange now plans to apply through France, where it has previously been in talks about a license, according to people familiar with the matter. But as the Financial Times report, even if they do somehow convince France to award them a license for MICA, it will come way after the July 1 deadline, which I imagine is super frustrating for customers in the EU. And if you're basically changing platforms, it would be very difficult to convince them to jump back once the license comes through, I would have to imagine. Binance customers in Poland, Italy, Spain and France have received emails this week telling them how to withdraw their money from the exchange because the company will not be granted a MICA license by 30th of June, 2026 And I mean, Binance said, I mean, you know, I try not to really pay attention too much to what Binance says because there's always thick corporate jargon that comes out of Binance official statements, in my experience. Binance said the company did not receive a formal decision on its application in Greece and so took the prudent decision to withdraw the Greek application and pursue authorization in another EU member state. So it's saying that, well, no, the EU didn't break up with us. We broke up with the EU is kind of what it's saying. But okay, everyone's kind of declined to comment. The Greece's regulator didn't comment. France's regulator also declined to comment. And I mean, something that Binance is just trying to sweeten the deal. I mean, it's the same kind of thing that it told Malta back in the day when it tried to set up shop in Malta. And then that never really crystallized either. In an effort to win approval from authorities in Athens, Binance committed to hiring many staff and opening an office in Greece while promising to bring billions of euros in investment into the country. Two people familiar with the process said, I find that a little bit, it just makes me cringe a little bit that that's kind of what they're resorting to. But okay.
But its Greek application was ultimately rejected because of concerns in many areas, in particular, its money laundering controls and whether Zao passed the fit and proper test they added ought to do with the months that he spent in prison and the billions of dollars worth of fines that Binance has had to pay the US for its lax anti-money laundering controls is what the reason is effectively.