Sources: Binance is still operating in the EU, months after not getting a MiCA license, using workarounds to onboard customers and routing trading via Abu Dhabi
The news hit with a thud in June: Binance Holdings Ltd., the world's largest crypto exchange, was about to get kicked out of the European Union.
Context & Ripple Effects
Binance’s European strategy moved from a MiCA application filed in Greece to rejection before the June 30 deadline. After Greece’s decision, Binance told EU customers it would stop providing services from July 1 while saying it would make a fresh push for authorization.
Bloomberg’s sources now allege that access has continued through customer-onboarding workarounds and trading routed via Abu Dhabi. That allegation matters because it tests whether a failed bloc-wide authorization can be offset by operational structures outside the EU.
First-order effects
- EU customers covered by the reported arrangements retain access to Binance despite the June service-stop notice, with trading reportedly routed through Abu Dhabi.
- Binance faces a sharper mismatch between its stated renewed licensing push and the reported means by which it continues serving some EU customers.
Second-order effects
- EU regulators may need to assess whether the reported onboarding and routing arrangements amount to serving EU clients without the MiCA permission Binance failed to obtain.
- Competitors pursuing authorized EU operations face a more pointed compliance question: whether cross-border routing can preserve customer access after a local license rejection.
Third-order effects
- If regulators treat customer location and practical access—not the entity processing a trade—as the decisive test, crypto exchanges will have less room to separate EU-facing distribution from offshore execution.
- The episode points to a broader enforcement contest over whether MiCA produces a single market for licensed platforms or pushes activity into harder-to-police cross-border structures.
The trend: Crypto regulation is shifting from licensing individual local entities toward testing the full chain of customer acquisition, access, and trade execution across jurisdictions.