31 Mar 2020 Anthony Lehrman
Binance Opens In South Korea Amid CoinMarketCap Acquisition
Binance, dubbed as the largest crypto exchange to date, announced the company is stepping into the South Korean market. Binance KR would operate on Binance’s white-label Cloud platform. According to Binance, the initial registrations and deposits would be available as of April 2, with live trading on April 4.
Binance.KR is the first crypto exchange to operate on Binance’s Cloud exchange solution. The Cloud service was released in February, which allows businesses to set up and deploy custom exchanges on the platform.
In order to promote and ease trading, the world’s largest crypto exchange also announced a whole new stalbecoin – Binance KRW. The stablecoin would be backed by South Korean Won, which effectively becomes the native currency of the new exchange. Binance clarified that at least initially, users would be able to trade Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB), and the new Binance KRW token. In the months after the initial start, Binance plans to increase the support with Tether (USDT), as well as Binance USD (BUSD).
Binance’s CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao commented on the launch of the new platform, stating that the company is “pleased to grant South Korea with a trading platform, which will benefit users with added security, trading depth and speed of Binance.” Zhao also noted that the Binance KRW addition would allow South Korean users to connect with the crypto sector, promoting local services quickly.
Binance also commented on the resent merge-and-acquisition (M&A) deals. To help solidify Binance’s place in South Korea, the company acquired BxB Inc, further increasing Binance’s presence in the Korean peninsular.
However, the crypto giants of South Korea are witnessing increased drawbacks and trading volumes fall-off in the past two years. Jiho Kang, who is co-CEO of Binance, commented on the decreased trading volumes, citing that “Binance aims to provide seamless cross-border liquidity, utilizing Binance’s technologies.”
Binance is also looking at the crypto data derivation sector, with what might be one of the biggest M&A deals in the crypto world.
According to data from TheBlockCrypto, the deal is set to happen shortly, as Binance and CoinMarketCap are in the final stages of negotiation. Binance is rumored to pay up to $400 million for the acquisition of CoinMarketCap.
Changpeng Zhao stated earlier this month that Binance “is very close to complete two very exciting acquisitions in the pipeline.”
“The M&A deals will have a great impact on the entire sector,” Zhao added.
Carylyne Chan, CSO at CoinMarketCap announced in October 2019, that the data aggregation company “did not seek any outside funding.”
“Since the very beginning of CoinMarketCap, we rely solely on bootstrapping and scaling with our own funds,” Chan noted.
Binance keeps its pace in the M&A sector pretty fast, with the company acquiring Trust Wallet in July 2018, derivatives crypto platform JEX in September 2019, as well as Indian crypto exchange WazirX in November 2019.
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