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Invest1 publisherNot yet confirmed elsewhere2 min readPublished

Binance is still verifying EU users 49 days after MiCA's deadline, tests indicate

Independent testing says new European accounts were opened, verified and funded in mid-August, seven weeks past the MiCA cutoff. The exchange appears on neither of ESMA's two lists.

The Investor · Invest desk

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What happened

  • Binance withdrew its Greek MiCA application in late June 2026, amid reports the Hellenic Capital Market Commission was preparing to reject it.
  • Analysis platform Sandmark says its mid-August testing completed identity verification on new accounts using European IDs and addresses from five countries.
  • In at least two of those cases the accounts reached full verification and were able to accept crypto deposits, according to the testers.
  • ESMA's register of authorized crypto-asset service providers listed roughly 330 firms in late August, and no Binance entity was among them.

Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made

Why it matters

  • cost Authorized firms bought their licences partly by giving up new EU signups on July 1; the venue with more volume than any of them kept both the revenue and the funnel.
  • exposure A Belgian user contracting with a Polish entity, paid via Bahraini affiliates and settled through a Georgian bank, has no MiCA-authorized counterparty to complain about.
  • precedent If the first MiCA penalty in Austria falls on procedural and marketing failings at a smaller platform, the pricing signal is that filing badly costs more than not filing.
  • contradiction Binance says availability was aligned with the law and turns on transitional rules and individual circumstances; the testers describe accounts created from scratch and funded.

Passporting is the part of MiCA that makes this an enforcement problem rather than a drafting one. One national regulator authorizes a crypto-asset service provider, and the licence then works across the European Economic Area [4]. The reward for granting sits with a single member state; the cost of policing a firm that never got authorized is spread across all the rest.

Binance told users in France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Belgium and Sweden that new registrations, deposits and certain yield products would be limited from July 1 [8], and said it would pursue authorization in another EU jurisdiction [9]. For a firm in that position, ESMA's instruction is narrow: activity should be confined mainly to helping existing clients exit [6].

Sandmark's dated test account puts 49 days between the deadline and a new, fully verified European customer able to receive crypto [19]. None of the registration flows it ran displayed any notice that the exchange lacks MiCA authorization [11], which is the least expensive obligation on the list and the one a firm actually winding down would have the least reason to skip.

The control in the experiment is the more informative half. A connection from the United States was routed to Binance.US, with deposits and trading disabled [13]. European connections progressed through onboarding whether or not a VPN was in use [2]. So the capacity to sort users by location and stop them exists in the product and is switched on for one jurisdiction [21].

On the European record, meanwhile, nothing has happened in either direction. The exchange is on neither the register of authorized providers nor the list of entities flagged for unauthorized activity [20], which leaves the largest exchange by trading volume [3] in a category the framework does not really maintain. That silence is doing work. Every firm that did get authorized accepted the July 1 halt on onboarding, the stop on marketing to EU residents and a wind-down plan as the price of the licence [5]. A firm larger by volume than any of them [22] continued to take signups, according to the mid-August testing, and has been asked to explain none of it.

The interesting question for anyone who did comply is not whether Binance eventually files somewhere else. It is what the register now measures. Right now it records which firms chose to be inside the regime, not which firms are subject to it.

What to watch

  • Whether any national regulator or ESMA adds Binance entities to the unauthorized-activity list, which would be the first formal contradiction of the exchange's account.
  • Which member state receives Binance's next MiCA application, and whether the withdrawn Greek file is disclosed in it.
  • Whether a retest shows the European onboarding flows closed, and what happens to accounts opened after July 1.

Clarity's read

What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.

Reality

Evidence54
Adoption58
Hype gap+18
Incentives60
Confidence46
Why these scores

Claim ledger

Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.

  1. [1]

    Reports indicate Binance has continued to allow new customers from European Union countries to open and verify accounts well after the July 1, 2026 deadline under the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation.

    ReportedSupportedSource: crowdfundinsider.com, citing reports2 sources— create a free account to open themView cited source
  2. [2]

    Independent testing in mid-August 2026 by crypto analysis platform Sandmark found restrictions on new accounts had not been fully implemented; staff registered and completed KYC using European identity documents and residential addresses from Austria, France, Germany, Spain and Belgium, both with and without VPNs.

    ReportedSupportedSource: Sandmark testing, reported by crowdfundinsider.com2 sources— create a free account to open themView cited source
  3. [3]

    Binance remains the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume.

    ReportedSupportedView cited source

Sources

1 independent publisher whose own reporting we read for this story.

  1. crowdfundinsider.com

    1 article · August 23, 2026

    Binance Is Reportedly Onboarding European Users Even After Missing Key Regulatory and MiCA Compliance Deadline

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