Binance Review

Binance is a global cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao. It is best known for crypto-to-crypto trading across a large list of coins, derivatives such as futures, and an ecosystem built around its own token, BNB. Where you live determines whether you can use it at all. The global platform has been barred or restricted in several countries, and U.S. residents are directed to a separate company, Binance.US.

Key takeaways

• Binance (global) suits active traders in countries where it is permitted who want a broad coin list (over 600 cryptocurrencies, according to Binance’s homepage in November 2026, mostly crypto-to-crypto pairs), deep liquidity, many order types and futures.
• The trade-offs are complexity and regulatory exposure, including the company’s 2023 guilty plea to U.S. money-laundering charges.
• U.S. residents must use Binance.US, a separate platform run by BAM Trading Services Inc. with a narrower offering and its own state restrictions.
• Depositing crypto is free. Withdrawal fees vary by coin and amount, and paying trading fees in BNB earns a discount.

What Binance is and who operates it

Binance is a centralized exchange. Users open an account, deposit crypto or supported fiat currencies, and trade against other users on Binance’s order books. The company holds custody of the assets in your exchange wallet while they sit on the platform.

Zhao, a software engineer and entrepreneur, launched the exchange in July 2017. Within about six months it had grown into one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. Its early reputation rested on three things: low trading fees, deep liquidity in crypto-to-crypto markets, and fast order processing.

Binance does not list company shares; its markets are in digital assets and crypto derivatives. The global business has operated through several legal entities. Binance Holdings Ltd. is the parent named in U.S. enforcement actions, and regional subsidiaries handle local services. Which entity serves you, and under which rules, depends on your country of residence.

Binance vs. Binance.US

In 2019 the global Binance exchange stopped serving U.S. customers because of regulatory concerns, and Binance.US launched as a separate exchange built to operate under U.S. rules. Binance.US is run by BAM Trading Services Inc. It has a narrower set of coins and services than the global site.

Binance.US is not available everywhere in the country. As of June 2023, residents of Hawaii, New York, Texas and Vermont could not use it. Using a virtual private network or other workaround to reach the global Binance site from the U.S. or any other restricted country breaches Binance’s Terms of Use. An exchange that discovers an account opened that way can restrict it, and the user is left trying to recover funds from a platform whose terms they broke.

Regulatory and legal record

United Kingdom, 2021. In June 2021 the Financial Conduct Authority barred Binance Markets Limited, a U.K. subsidiary, from carrying out regulated activities in Britain. The notice covered offering crypto asset and crypto derivatives services to U.K. customers through that entity. Binance said at the time that the ban did not affect services provided to U.K. users directly through Binance.com.

SEC lawsuit, June 2023. On June 5, 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Binance Holdings Ltd., BAM Trading Services Inc. and Zhao with a range of securities law violations. The SEC alleged that the companies operating Binance.US misrepresented their trading controls and oversight, ran unregistered exchanges, broker-dealers and clearing agencies, and took part in the unregistered offer and sale of securities to U.S. investors. These were allegations in a civil complaint, not findings.

Binance.US dollar suspension, October 2023. On October 17, 2023, Binance.US paused U.S. dollar deposits, withdrawals and trading. Users kept access to crypto, but the dollar on-ramp and off-ramp shut down.

Guilty plea, November 2023. On November 21, 2023, Binance and Zhao pleaded guilty to U.S. federal charges related to money laundering. Binance agreed to pay $4.3 billion to resolve the charges. Zhao stepped down as CEO and agreed to pay $50 million. The case concerned failures in the controls an exchange must keep to stop illicit funds moving through it. It was not a finding that customer deposits had gone missing. It still shows that, for years, the company’s compliance fell short of what U.S. law requires.

How to trade on Binance

1. Register with an email address or phone number and set up two-factor authentication.
2. Complete know-your-customer (KYC) verification. Binance requires identity documents before you can trade.
3. Fund the account. You can send crypto to the deposit address Binance assigns you, or deposit a supported fiat currency where your region allows it.
4. Pick a market, such as a coin quoted against a stablecoin, and choose an order type.
5. Place the order and track it in your open orders until it fills or you cancel it.
6. Withdraw to an external wallet or bank account when you want the assets off the exchange.

Spot order types

Binance’s spot market supports four main order types:

• Limit order: executes only at your limit price or better. It may never fill if the market does not reach that price.
• Market order: executes right away at the best prices available on the order book. The fill can differ from the last traded price, especially in thin markets.
• Stop-limit order: stays inactive until the price reaches your stop level, then places a limit order. The stop is the trigger and the limit is the worst price you will accept. In a fast move the price can pass through the limit, leaving the order unfilled.
• One-cancels-the-other (OCO): pairs two orders, typically a take-profit limit and a stop-limit. When one executes, the other is cancelled.

Derivatives

For futures and other crypto derivatives, Binance offers seven order types: limit, market, stop-limit, stop market, trailing stop, post-only and limit TP/SL (a strategy order that attaches take-profit and stop-loss levels). Futures trading uses leverage. Positions can be liquidated when losses eat through the margin backing them, so a modest price move can close out a leveraged account.

Fees and funding

Binance does not charge a fee to deposit cryptocurrency or other funds. Withdrawals carry a fee that depends on the coin and the amount withdrawn. Network conditions on each blockchain also play a part, so the fee for moving one asset can differ sharply from another.

A flat withdrawal fee matters more on small amounts. As a hypothetical example (not Binance’s actual schedule), a fixed fee of 1 unit of a stablecoin costs 1% of a 100-unit withdrawal but only 0.1% of a 1,000-unit withdrawal. Check the current fee for the specific coin and network before you withdraw, and include it in returns worked out with the crypto profit calculator.

Trading fees are charged on each trade, and Binance offers a discount to users who pay those fees in BNB. Because the fee applies to every fill, the cost of a round trip (buying and later selling) is roughly twice the cost of one side.

Fiat access varies by region. As of June 2023, the global platform did not accept U.S. dollar deposits from its users but supported deposits in 27 other fiat currencies, including the euro.

Other Binance services

Binance has expanded well beyond spot trading. The main products include:

• Binance Earn: pays interest on stablecoins and other crypto. Rates depend on the coin and the term you commit to. Interest on an exchange is not deposit interest. Your assets remain exposed to the platform and, for crypto other than stablecoins, to price swings.
• Crypto Loans: let users borrow against crypto collateral for spot, futures and margin trading. Loan terms of 7, 14, 30, 90 and 180 days are available, with interest calculated by the hour. If the collateral falls in value, the loan can be called or the collateral sold.
• Binance Card: a Visa card that converts crypto to fiat at the point of sale. Binance charges no admin fees on it, though third-party fees can still apply.
• Binance Pay: a service for sending crypto payments worldwide without a fee, which can also be used in Binance Marketplace.
• Binance Smart Pool: a mining pool that lets miners switch between cryptocurrencies to optimize their income.
• Binance Labs: an incubator that backs early-stage blockchain projects, often before their token sale, with funding, advice and help with listing and fundraising.
• Launchpad: a platform for launching new blockchain projects. More than 70 projects had launched on it by July 2023.

Availability of each product, fiat deposit method and service depends on your country and can change as local rules and banking partners change. A service on the global site may be missing or restricted on a regional platform or on Binance.US.

Binance Coin (BNB)

BNB is the native token of the Binance ecosystem. Its first use was on the exchange itself, for trading fee discounts. It is also the native asset of BNB Chain, the blockchain Binance developed.

BNB launched through an initial coin offering in July 2017. The whitepaper set out a supply of 200 million tokens. Of these, 100 million went to ICO participants, 80 million to the founding team and 20 million to angel investors. Binance said that nearly half of the ICO proceeds would go to branding and marketing and about one-third to building and upgrading the platform.

The token started as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum. In 2019 it moved to become the native coin of Binance’s own chain, now called BNB Chain. Because BNB’s uses are tied closely to Binance’s businesses, the token’s fortunes depend on the company’s regulatory standing and the health of its ecosystem, not only on wider crypto market conditions.

Security and trust

On security, any custodial exchange is exposed to hacking, because it holds large pools of user assets. In 2022 attackers stole about $570 million worth of BNB through a bridge linked to Binance’s blockchain. That incident hit the chain’s infrastructure rather than user exchange balances. Users can limit their own exposure with two-factor authentication, withdrawal address allowlists, and by moving long-term holdings to a wallet they control.

On conduct, the 2023 guilty plea and settlement ended the U.S. criminal case, but Binance’s ability to keep serving customers in any given country still depends on how local regulators treat it. Crypto held on an exchange is generally not covered by the deposit insurance that protects bank accounts, so recovering funds after a failure or freeze depends on the exchange and the legal process in its jurisdiction.

How we checked Binance

Our visit to binance.com took place on 13 November 2026, from Tallinn, Estonia. The address forwarded us to www.binance.com. Down in the footer, in small print under “Support”, the site states that “Binance ADGM entities are regulated by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of the Abu Dhabi Global Markets (ADGM)” and names Nest Exchange Limited and Nest Clearing and Custody Limited. From there we opened the Licenses page, Legal Home, the Privacy Notice Dashboard and the About page. That last page mentions the Monetary Authority of Singapore and a Barbados financial regulator. Read closely, those names sit inside board member biographies. They are not licence claims.

The spot trading fee page lists 0.100% maker and 0.100% taker for a Regular User, and shows 25% off when fees are paid in BNB. On the homepage Binance advertises over 600 cryptocurrencies. It also says users need to register an account and complete identity verification before trading, so buying without signing up is not an option. We did not open an account. The Proof of Reserves page showed a BTC ratio of 100.05%, and the homepage says the SAFU fund held a reserve of 15,000 BTC as of February 2026. Those are the company’s own numbers. We have not audited them.

Next came the ADGM FSRA Public Register. Our search for Nest Exchange Limited returned a firm record under that exact name, showing a Recognition Order dated 05 January 2026. Neither that record nor the Binance pages we opened displayed a licence number. On Trustpilot, read the same day, Binance scored 1.3/5 from 6,217 reviews, with 82% of them one-star; the company had replied to each of the 8 newest. The first Wayback Machine capture of binance.com dates from 2017-05-18.

We looked up only one entity. Nest Clearing and Custody Limited and Nest Trading Limited, which the site also names, went unchecked, and we did not find a risk warning on the pages we visited, so we cannot say which entity would serve a given reader or under what terms.

Who Binance may suit

Binance’s strengths have been a broad coin list, deep crypto-to-crypto liquidity, a wide range of order types and a large derivatives offering. That makes the global platform relevant to active traders who live in a country where it is permitted and who want access to many altcoin pairs or futures.

The trade-offs are complexity and regulatory exposure. Coinbase is generally considered easier for beginners, while Binance’s interface and product range take more effort to learn. U.S. residents are limited to Binance.US and its narrower offering. Anyone choosing an exchange mainly for simplicity or a home-country regulatory framework may find a better fit among the platforms compared in our guide to the best crypto exchanges and apps.

BitcoinBTC$64,908EthereumETH$1,817SolanaSOL$71.49

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