Binance successor in Russia: Everything you need to know about CommEx, so far
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has claimed that it will fully quit Russia by selling its local business to a completely new exchange known as CommEx. While promising its customers a “smooth” migration, Binance hasn’t provided much information about its successor in Russia.
At the time of the announcement, little is known about CommEx’s founders or background. The exchange was launched on Sept. 26, 2023, just one day before Binance announced the sale of its business to the newly created exchange for an undisclosed amount.
A spokesperson for CommEx didn’t respond to multiple questions from users about the company’s owners or executives in the official Telegram group. The person claimed that CommEx is registered in the Seychelles and will serve its customers as a global exchange focused on two main regions: the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Asia.
CommEx already on Binance-owned CoinMarketCap
At launch, CommEx supports only a browser version, with the firm promising to introduce a mobile app in the near future. Despite being launched just one day ago, CommEx is already listed on CoinMarketCap, a major crypto tracking website that Binance acquired in April 2020. On the other hand, rival market tracker CoinGecko doesn’t include any information about CommEx at the time of writing.
According to CoinMarketCap data, CommEx lists 25 trading pairs at launch, including stablecoins like Tether (USDT) and Binance’s BNB (BNB) cryptocurrency. “CommEx is a rapidly expanding cryptocurrency exchange, backed by top-tier crypto VCs,” the description of the new exchange on CoinMarketCap reads.
CommEx will initially support peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions in Russia, allowing users to exchange their crypto without using the platform’s fiat channels. The platform will launch spot trading of USDT against Russia’s fiat currency, the ruble, once fiat channels are live, according to a spokesperson in CommEx’s Telegram group.
A spokesperson for Binance told Cointelegraph that it would be “entirely optional” for Binance users to move over to CommEx. “You may also withdraw your funds to another platform if you’d like,” the person noted, adding that users would still be able to migrate their assets to CommEx. The spokesperson added:
“Russia KYC’d new users registration will immediately be redirected to CommEX. Then, over the next several months, Binance will sunset all exchange services and business lines in Russia.”
According to the CommEx representative, users can trade without completing Know Your Customer (KYC) checks for up to 2 Bitcoin (BTC) in withdrawals. The firm will not allow account registration or services in locations including the United States, Belgium, the Republic of Cyprus, Czechia, the Netherlands and Singapore, as well as sanctioned regions like Iran and Crimea, CommEx’s location restrictions page reads.
The spokesperson also said it’s unlikely that Binance’s contactless payment tool, Binance Pay, will continue to work with CommEx.
Users question CommEx ownership
Binance’s announcement has triggered some speculation in the local crypto community regarding the owners of Binance’s successor in Russia. Some users have found similarities in the layouts of Binance and CommEx’s websites, while others said that CommEx was a “full copy” of Binance’s website.
“They just changed the logo and colors but essentially it’s the same website. I wouldn’t be surprised if Russian tops who left banana [Binance] would be managing directors here,” one commenter wrote in a now-deleted comment on CommEx’s Telegram group.
Among the similarities are significant resemblances between Binance and CommEx’s privacy notices and other website pages like terms of use. For example, CommEx’s privacy notice essentially provides a reworded copy of Binance’s privacy notice, closely following its structure and many formulations.
Russia has been one of Binance’s biggest markets, and the country is listed as the top market in terms of user visits for the website Binance.com, accounting for 6.9% of total visits at the time of writing, according to data from SimilarWeb.
“I don’t think that CZ [Changpeng Zhao] is ready to abandon such a huge pie like Russia and leave just like that,” one local cryptocurrency observer told Cointelegraph. Some people in the community have drawn parallels between CommEx in Russia and Binance’s affiliate in the United States, Binance.US, which claims to operate “independently” of Binance.
“It looks like some sort of Binance.US but just without the word ‘Binance’ in its name,” another local crypto enthusiast told Cointelegraph.
Related: Binance and CEO Changpeng Zhao ask court to dismiss SEC suit
A spokesperson for Binance declined to comment on whether the company is aware of CommEx’s founders or executives. CommEx’s spokesperson declined to comment immediately, stating that the firm is focused on “platform optimization and stability,” as the CommEx website briefly went down amid Russian users rushing to the website after Binance made the announcement. CommEx’s Russian Telegram group, which had just about 50 members before the announcement, now counts nearly 2,000 users.
“With this sale, Binance fully exits Russia. We have no plans to get back,” a spokesperson for Binance told Cointelegraph.
Magazine: How to protect your crypto in a volatile market — Bitcoin OGs and experts weigh in
Politics
Badenoch pulls off first conference speech as leader, but it is less clear if this will be her last
There’s no question that Kemi Badenoch’s on the ropes after a low-energy first year as leader that has seen the Conservative Party slide backwards by pretty much every metric.
But on Wednesday, the embattled leader came out swinging with a show-stopping pledge to scrap stamp duty, which left the hall delirious. “I thought you’d like that one,” she said with a laugh as party members cheered her on.
A genuine surprise announcement – many in the shadow cabinet weren’t even told – it gave the Conservatives and their leader a much-needed lift after what many have dubbed the lost year.
Politics latest: Stamp duty to be axed under Tories
Ms Badenoch with her husband, Hamish. Pic: PA
Ms Badenoch tried to answer that criticism this week with a policy blitz, headlined by her promise on stamp duty.
This is a leader giving her party some red meat to try to help her party at least get a hearing from the public, with pledges on welfare, immigration, tax cuts and policing.
In all of it, a tacit admission from Ms Badenoch and her team that as politics speeds up, they have not kept pace, letting Reform UK and Nigel Farage run ahead of them and grab the microphone by getting ahead of the Conservatives on scrapping net zero targets or leaving the ECHR in order to deport illegal migrants more easily.
Ms Badenoch is now trying to answer those criticisms and act.
At the heart of her offer is £47bn of spending cuts in order to pay down the nation’s debt pile and fund tax cuts such as stamp duty.
All of it is designed to try to restore the party’s reputation for economic competence, against a Labour Party of tax rises and a growing debt burden and a Reform party peddling “fantasy economics”.
She needs to do something, and fast. A YouGov poll released on the eve of her speech put the Conservatives joint third in the polls with the Lib Dems on 17%.
That’s 10 percentage points lower than when Ms Badenoch took power just under a year ago. The crisis, mutter her colleagues, is existential. One shadow cabinet minister lamented to me this week that they thought it was “50-50” as to whether the party can survive.
Read more from Sky News:
Starmer blames Tories for China spy trial being dropped
UK won’t give more visas to Indian workers, says PM
(L-R) Shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith, shadow environment secretary Victoria Atkins and shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly. Pic: PA
Ms Badenoch had to do two things in her speech on Wednesday: the first was to try to reassert her authority over her party. The second was to get a bit of attention from the public with a set of policies that might encourage disaffected Tories to look at her party again.
On the first point, even her critics would have to agree that she had a successful conference and has given herself a bit of space from the constant chatter about her leadership with a headline-grabbing policy that could give her party some much-needed momentum.
On the second, the promise of spending control coupled with a retail offer of tax cuts does carve out a space against the Labour government and Reform.
But the memory of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget, the chaos of Boris Johnson’s premiership, and the failure of Sunak to cut NHS waiting lists or tackle immigration still weigh on the Conservative brand.
Ms Badenoch might have revived the room with her speech, but whether that translates into a wider revival around the country is very hard to read.
Ms Badenoch leaves Manchester knowing she pulled off her first conference speech as party leader: what she will be less sure about is whether it will be her last.
I thought she tacitly admitted that to me when she pointedly avoided answering the question of whether she would resign if the party goes backwards further in the English council, Scottish parliament and Welsh Senedd elections next year.
“Let’s see what the election result is about,” was her reply.
That is what many in her party are saying too, because if Ms Badenoch cannot show progress after 18 months in office, she might see her party turn to someone else.
The UK has lifted its four-year ban on crypto exchange-traded notes, with analysts predicting the move could grow the UK crypto market by 20%.
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