Mapping Binance’s globe-trotting empire

Since its founding in 2017, Binance has shifted its principal place of business around the world at least half a dozen times and has spun up subsidiaries in just as many countries.

However, Binance has made mapping its official headquarters incredibly difficult with the company denying for many years that it even had any.

Even three years into the company’s operations, founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) claimed that his company didn’t have a headquarters “because Bitcoin doesn’t have an office.”

After CZ repeatedly refused to name a primary place of business, US regulators began to complain and eventually escalated their inquiries into a criminal investigation. This ended with him pleading guilty to one criminal count and Binance itself pleading guilty to three criminal counts.

The reason for avoiding the question had become clear.

Now that CZ has served his prison sentence and subsequently received a presidential pardon for his crime, it’s illuminating to recall Binance’s globe-trotting endeavours as it built and maintained the world’s largest crypto exchange.

Protos has mapped Binance’s relocations below and has detailed its most significant primary locations.

China

Binance was founded in China in July 2017 and raised its first major source of capital in its $15 million initial coin offering of BNB.

The company owes its initial success to Chinese enthusiasm for digital assets and CZ’s experience at Shanghai-based OKCoin.

Although Binance began operations in Shanghai, it fled in September 2017 due to a sudden, serious, and ultimately short-lived government hostility toward it. 

It had a temporary nexus of operations in Hong Kong from late 2017 through early 2018 while it worked on transitioning to Japan.

Japan

After fleeing China with Binance’s headquarters and servers, the team set up shop in Japan, renting a small office in Tokyo in September 2017.

In March 2018, Japan’s Financial Services Agency sent Binance a warning about operating without proper licenses.

Although Binance quickly disbursed its primary operations across the globe to places like Taiwan, Malta, and elsewhere, it eventually returned to Japan by 2023 and acquired the locally licensed exchange Sakura Exchange BitCoin, which it renamed Binance Japan.

Malta

Also during spring 2018, Binance announced it was going to officially relocate its headquarters to Malta. However, the announcement was mostly a cover story.

At the time, Malta was attempting to brand itself as a particularly crypto-friendly jurisdiction. 

CZ met with the prime minister, Binance opened a Maltese bank account in June 2018, and the company relocated a few staff to work there briefly. 

However, by October 2019, it had abandoned any plans to establish a permanent presence in the country, and just a few months later, Malta was issuing warnings against the company’s unlicensed operations.

Malta would eventually contest that Binance ever had any meaningful operations in the country.

Read more: New Binance CEO makes CZ’s ‘non-executive’ role more blatant

Cayman Islands

The offshore tax haven certainly qualifies as an official place of business for Binance, despite few visible signs of its headquarters in the country.

Binance maintained a corporate registration in the Cayman Islands, but like many transnational corporations, it simply took advantage of Caymanian laws to maintain a legal entity while continuing to disperse operations.

Like Malta and other countries, the Cayman Islands eventually issued a warning against Binance’s unlicensed operations.

Indeed, in July 2021, the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority warned that Binance was “not registered, licensed, regulated or otherwise authorised by the authority to operate a crypto-currency exchange from or within the Cayman Islands.”

Singapore

Binance’s presence in Singapore includes employing hundreds of Singaporean remote workers, apparently through a subsidiary called Binance Asia Services Pte. Limited.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore added Binance to its investor alert list in 2021.

Binance subsequently gave up on pursuing a Singaporean license and shut down its Singaporean subsidiary, Binance.sg, in December 2021.

It gave Singaporean customers until February 2022 to withdraw assets.

United Arab Emirates

After years of “dispersed operations,” CZ showed interest in making the UAE Binance’s de facto headquarters.

He purchased an apartment in downtown Dubai in October 2021 while Binance showed an interest in establishing an office in the country’s World Trade Center in December 2021.

Binance Dubai received a license from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority in March 2024 and although Binance hasn’t officially confirmed that the UAE was ever its official global headquarters, its willingness to concentrate its efforts there marked the beginning of the end of Binance’s “dispersed operations” phase.

Bahrain

In March 2022, Bahrain’s central bank awarded Binance its first crypto service provider license in the Gulf region.

By May 2022, Binance Bahrain received a Category 4 license, enabling it to legally offer a full range of digital asset and custody services.

In 2025, Bahrain awarded BPay Global, a Binance subsidiary, its payment service provider license.

Abu Dhabi

As of this week, Binance has gained “its most comprehensive regulatory footholds yet” in Abu Dhabi. Politics certainly motivated the move.

Binance facilitated a $2 billion investment from Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s MGX that benefitted Donald Trump, and Binance Co-CEO Richard Teng has previous executive work experience in the country.

Read more: How Binance’s USDe ‘depeg’ cost the exchange millions

Taiwan

As Binance was fleeing Japan in spring 2018, it spun up operations in Taiwan by hiring local developers and support specialists.

Taiwan was probably never a de facto headquarters for Binance, but it was an important part of its geographic dispersal after Japan during which it split operations into multiple countries instead of focusing on a main office.

Seychelles

Like the Cayman Islands, Binance maintains a registration in Seychelles but doesn’t appear to maintain an operational base.

Binance platform operator Nest Services Limited has also registered as a virtual asset services provider with the Seychelles Financial Intelligence Unit.

Non-primary countries with Binance operations

Although only Binance executives know the true history of Binance’s primary places of business, the above list includes many of the countries that are publicly known. 

In addition to those major offices, however, Binance has also established a variety of subsidiaries, affiliates, acquisitions, spin-offs, or majority-controlled entities in other countries.

Below is a list of some of these Binance-branded entities.

As with many Binance operations, some of these operations continue today, whereas others have discontinued.

• Australia: Binance Australia Pty Ltd
• Brazil: Binance Brasil
• Cyprus: Binance Cyprus Ltd
• France: Binance France SAS
• India: WazirX
• Jersey: Binance Jersey Ltd
• Kazakhstan: Binance Kazakhstan
• Kyrgyzstan: Binance Kyrgyzstan
• Lithuania: Binance UAB (Bifinity UAB) 
• Netherlands: Binance Netherlands
• Nigeria: Binance Nigeria Limited
• Poland: Binance Poland
• Russia: CommEX (formerly Binance Russia)
• Singapore: Binance Singapore Pte Ltd
• South Korea: GoPax (Streami Inc)
• Spain: Binance Spain
• Sweden: Binance Sweden
• Switzerland: Binance Switzerland AG
• Thailand: Gulf Binance (joint venture with Gulf Innova)
• Turkey: Binance Turkey
• Uganda: Binance Uganda
• United Kingdom: Binance.UK (Binance Markets Ltd)
• USA: Binance.US

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