CommEX, the company that acquired Binance’s Russian operations, expects around a million customers to switch to its platform, Russian media Kommersant reported Wednesday, October 4.
However, not all of Binance’s Russian customers are likely to migrate to CommEx. According to Dmitry Stepanin, CEO of Satoshkin, Kommersant pointed out that crypto traders mainly turned to the ByBit exchange, which has shown significant marketing activity recently. Other exchanges such as Huobi, Bitget, Kucoin and Gand ate.io, which offer similar functionality to Binance, are also expected to see a strong influx of users. This observation is corroborated by the P2P Service Army, which has reported a steady increase in active advertisements for other crypto exchanges.
Anton Toroptsev, CEO of CommEX, told Kommersant that he estimates the influx to his platform will be around 1 million users. In contrast, independent financial analyst Andrey Barkhota estimates that there were at least 700,000 Russians registered on Binance.
However, Binance has refrained from disclosing the exact number of Russian customers. The user transition from Binance to CommEX will take place in phases, according to Toroptsev. Initially, users can log into CommEX with a Binance account, with only basic Know Your Customer (KYC) information and login credentials transferred. However, the complete KYC data is expected to be transferable within a week.
Binance’s withdrawal from Russia, according to Roman Nekrasov, co-founder of the ENCRY Foundation, is mainly due to pressure from US regulators who accuse the exchange of money laundering and sanctions evasion, Kommersant reported. Furthermore, Binance had gradually introduced restrictions for Russian users, including a ban on holding more than $10,000 in their wallets and limiting transactions to rubles only. Yet Binance reportedly earns between $2 billion and $4 billion annually from its Russian client base.
Nevertheless, Sergey Mendeleev, the head of InDeFi Smart Bank, also told Kommersant that Binance is merely rebranding for smoother operations in Russia. While CommEX, despite the Russian takeover, maintains its registration in the Seychelles and focuses on Asia and the CIS. The relative anonymity of CommEX’s owners and the nascent status of the platform represent potential risks of scams, hacker attacks or security holes, Nekrasov warns.
As the crypto trading landscape continues to evolve in response to regulatory pressures and market dynamics, the metamorphosis of Binance’s operations in Russia provides a case study in adaptation and resilience.