Reverse solicitation turns on a fact about marketing rather than a fact about a signup form, which is what makes it awkward to police: the provision covers services supplied to a customer who arrived on their own initiative, and not to one who was targeted [3]. Crypto.news ran its own tests across Austria, France, Germany, Spain and Belgium and found new users completing registration and identity verification, with crypto deposits still working on active accounts [8]; one account opened on Aug. 19 with a European identity document and residential address was verified and then funded [9], which is 49 days after the July 1 cutoff, seven weeks to the day [16]. Those tests establish that the door opened, though not who knocked first, which is the fact the exemption depends on [3].
The figure that decides whether any of this cost Binance anything is a share: more than 45% of global spot volume in late August, with the euro trading share largely unchanged from before the deadline [6]. A share is a ratio, Binance's euro volume over the whole euro market's, so an unchanged share is equally consistent with a smaller euro market and a smaller Binance book, and what is reported is the ratio rather than the absolute flow [17]. Nor is there a figure for what portion of Binance's own volume is European [19], so the size of the business being defended here is not something a reader can compute.
ESMA's instrument, so far, is a question. Before the deadline it told unauthorized providers to stop onboarding EU customers and confine remaining services to the steps a customer needs to exit, with wind-down plans in force by July 1 [12]; since then it has sought confirmation that Binance's wind-down is proceeding properly [5], while Binance stays off the ESMA register of authorized providers [10]. Binance says it follows regulations in the jurisdictions where it operates and is actively working toward becoming MiCA-authorised [7], and told customers their assets would remain accessible when the July 1 service changes began, with chief executive Richard Teng saying affected users would keep previously communicated options including withdrawals [14].
The Greek application ended before a regulator decided anything [15], and that is the allocation choice worth noticing: authorization from any one member state passports across the 27-country bloc [11], so the identity of the next filing regulator is most of the game, and every week before that filing lands is European revenue earned under an exemption instead of a licence [1].
Two readings compete. The generous one is that reverse solicitation is a real provision of the regulation and leaning on it is compliance rather than evasion [3]; the less generous one is that ESMA's request for confirmation is the front end of coordinated national action, in which case the exemption gets tested on evidence about marketing rather than about account flows [5]. A licensing regime whose observable output two months in is restricted accounts in six countries [13] alongside an unchanged euro share [6] has produced its paperwork; it has not yet produced a price. What would move that: Binance appearing on the ESMA register [10], which retires the question, or a national regulator publishing a sanction with a euro figure attached, which would make the cost computable for the first time [18].
