By
Benjamin Njiri
April 23rd, 2024
The Turkish Lira was the latest fiat currency that gets the support of the leading crypto exchange Binance in November 2019.
Global cryptocurrency exchange Binance added support for three fiat pairings with the Turkish Lira (TRY) that feature Ethereum (ETH), XRP, and leading stablecoin Tether (USDT). And that’s not all. Users will from now on be able to trade USDT against the Russian Ruble (RUB) as well.
#Binance Adds ETH/TRY, XRP/TRY, USDT/TRY and USDT/RUB Trading Pairshttps://t.co/TlhaxBEOWs pic.twitter.com/al8syw2vc7
— Binance (@binance) December 25, 2019
This obviously became a ritual for this number one crypto exchange. Last Christmas, Binance added XRP as a base currency and renamed its ETH market to simply ALTS market.
The Turkish Lira became the latest fiat currency to land on Binance by trading volumes already in November. However, the company allowed its customers to use this currency to purchase BTC, ETH, and XRP only through Turkey-based payment company Papara.
Before that, Binance implemented support for five other fiat currencies, including Euro (EUR). During the last few months, the company’s growth into the fiat-to-crypto trading sector has been literally amazing.
Aside from adding the fiat pairs to Binance.com, the company went on spreading in Singapore, Uganda, and other parts of the world, by opening new multiple fiat exchanges. Still, Binance still has to defeat the U.S. market. Its American subsidiary that started trading back in September and is led by the former Ripple executive Catherine Coley, hasn’t succeeded for now in gaining compelling traction. Its trading volumes are not satisfying and aren’t near the home-based Coinbase.
Binance Investing Big Money in FTX
Meanwhile, last week, Binance announced it has invested an undisclosed amount of money in derivatives platform FTX as part of a strategic partnership between the two companies.
In return, FTX will help evolve Binance’s products, especially the Binance.com itself but also the over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk. FTX then said its intention is to build out a suite of products complementary to tokenized ecosystems, a project Malta-based Binance will assist.
And also, for this Christmas, Binance didn’t forget its users. Actually, it had prepared some presents and had announced a Christmas ‘Give Away’ of a Tesla Cybertruck and $50k of TROY tokens. Of course, ‘Give Away’ might be a slightly misleading description, as receiving the truck required a huge load of TROY trading (and trading fee spending) on Binance.
Binance Singapore Suspends BTC Withdrawals
Be it as it may, last week Binance Singapore has supposedly all of a sudden suspended a Bitcoin withdrawal from one trader using a wallet with a coin-mixing service. What happened is that Twitter user Catxolotl (@bittlecat) allegedly received a message from Binance Singapore informing him that his Bitcoin withdrawals were suspended due to “risk management.”
The company reportedly said it thought the individual was using coin-mixing service CoinJoin, part of the privacy-focused wallet Wasabi.
He said:
“I’m very concerned that Binance knew I was sending to wasabi, when all I input was a bc1 address, nothing more.”
Trying to fix this issue, Binance then asked Catxolotl to provide some pretty insightful personal information as is the purpose of withdrawing to the Wasabi wallet, providing the supporting documents, his current occupation, and annual income range as well.
One Twitter user commented that this kind of freezing the funds and request for information is an invasion of privacy. It started to question if the exchange made it clear in their terms that users may be blocked from withdrawing Bitcoin.