.svg)
Binance’s UK director quietly leaves the company, Binance hires several unnamed partners to bring back euro deposits and withdrawals, and ChainArgos claims that Islamist terror groups have handled $1bn in stablecoin transactions.
Jonathan Farnell, head of Binance UK, has joined the ranks of more than a dozen Binance executives that have stepped down from the company over the past few months.
Neither Farnell or Binance have made an official announcement of the resignation, but Farnell was seen to have changed his LinkedIn title to “Ex Binance Director and Senior Executive”.
He has also updated his job history on LinkedIn to show that he left the company at the end of September. In a statement shared with Vixio, a Binance spokesperson confirmed Farnell’s exit.
Up until August, Farnell also served as CEO of Bifinity, a Binance subsidiary and fiat-to-crypto on-ramp.
Renamed Binance Connect in March 2022, the service supported more than 50 cryptocurrencies and handled fiat-to-crypto payments using Visa and Mastercard. When Binance Connect was shuttered in August, Farnell’s position went with it.
Farnell joined Binance UK in May 2021 after serving as CEO of EQONEX, a since-liquidated company that offered digital asset services to institutional investors, and head of compliance at eToro.
Farnell is the third Binance country or area head to resign in as many months.
In August, Leon Foong resigned as head of Asia-Pacific, and in September Gleb Kostarev resigned as VP and head of Eastern Europe, Turkey, Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
Binance’s UK regulations headache
The news of Farnell’s resignation comes at a time of growing regulatory pain for Binance, particularly in the UK.
On October 16, as covered by Vixio, Binance stopped onboarding new UK customers due to difficulties complying with the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) new crypto-asset promotion rules.
In addition, Binance said it has suspended the launch of new products and services in the UK until its compliance with the promotion rules can be established.
As an unregistered firm, all of Binance’s promotions must be approved by an FCA-registered firm. Prior to the rules coming into effect, Binance had teamed up with Rebuildingsociety.com, a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform, to serve as its approver.
Two days after the promotions rules came into effect, however, Rebuildingsociety.com was ordered to cease offering itself as an approver and withdraw all of its approvals to date.
Vixio asked a Binance spokesperson whether the firm’s difficulties with the promotion rules relate to Farnell’s resignation, but no comment was offered.
A partnership with no name
In other Binance news, this week the exchange announced that it has teamed up with several new “partners” to handle euro withdrawals and deposits.
However, when announcing these partnerships, Binance did not reveal the names of the companies that it will be working with.
“Binance has announced new partnerships aimed at enhancing EUR transactions for its European clientele,” it said.
“The agreements with newly onboarded fiat partners will facilitate EUR payments, deposits and withdrawals on the platform, addressing a vital aspect of cryptocurrency adoption by easing the transition between fiat and crypto.”
Binance added that the new partnerships will allow European customers to deposit and withdraw using open banking, SEPA and SEPA Instant. They will also re-enable crypto-to-euro trading pairs on the exchange.
In June, Binance’s previous partner, Paysafe, announced plans to cut tites with the exchange. As agreed by both parties, Paysafe phased out its support of SEPA deposit and withdrawal services on September 25.
Since then, European users have been unable to withdraw fiat currency from the exchange. In the UK, users have been unable to withdraw GBP since May this year.
Tether under pressure following terror group stablecoin study
Over the past week, blockchain analytics firm ChainArgos has been defending itself from critics after publishing a wallet transaction analysis showing that Islamist terror groups have handled about $1bn in stablecoins.
ChainArgos’ study is based on an analysis of wallets that Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF) has publicly labelled as controlled by Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS and other terror groups.
All of the transactions in the study took place between 2020 and 2023. Most use Tether’s USDT, although some use Circle’s USDC and True USD.
The most active wallet, which has handled almost $69m in stablecoins, has interacted regularly with other wallets that are believed to be controlled by Hezbollah. According to ChainArgos, this same wallet was active as recently as October 11.
The analytics firm also noted links between the wallets and Amir Capital, a Russian Ponzi scheme, and potential links to the collapse of TerraUSD in May 2022.
In addition, several of the wallets show signs of “smurfing”, where the same wallet is used to receive many small-value transfers. In the suspected smurfing examples, the sending addresses are hosted by Binance.
ChainArgos’ study was received with a mixture of awe and anger among crypto observers.
Although some commended the firm’s work, others such as rival analytics firm Chainanalysis said the study gives the impression that the terrorist groups had “raised” $1bn from crypto, which is not the case.
Tether responded to the study with an announcement that it has frozen 32 wallet addresses containing $873,000 linked to terrorism and warfare in Israel and Ukraine.
It added that, to date, it has worked with 31 agencies worldwide to freeze assets worth $835m, although most of these assets were linked to theft rather than terrorism.
“Despite Tether’s active support of law enforcement, there are still some journalists and detractors within the blockchain industry, making attempts to spin a case against the crypto industry,” said Tether.
At the same time, Tether accused these detractors of failing to hold the “traditional financial system accountable” for “not combating the funding of criminal matters”.
