![]() ![]() She is one of several women to ascend to Binance’s highest ranks, including Guangying Chen (the company’s unofficial CFO, a recent Forbes investigation found) and Binance’s cofounder, Hi Ye, with whom Zhao has children. Hai had joined Binance to lead its charity operations in 2018 and became the face of the company’s charm offensive on global regulators. (Binance did not make Hai available for comment.) crypto license had failed under the direction of an executive named Helen Hai, a Chinese-born British citizen who is married to Daming Zhu, an early Binance investor and personal friend of Zhao’s, according to multiple former Binance employees. The company’s previous attempts to gain a U.K. ![]() While the Lithuanian entity primarily processed customer credit card transactions, it also became integral to Binance’s effort to gain a foothold in the U.K. Binance’s spokesperson Matthews said the company “is not required to be licensed by the Bank of Lithuania as Bifinity does not hold, manage, or collect client funds or issue electronic money.” First incorporated in 2020 as Binance UAB, Lithuanian authorities were initially skeptical: The country’s central bank issued a warning against the company in July 2021, alleging that it was offering "unlicensed investment services." But Binance found a workaround: Instead, it registered the company as a virtual currency exchange with the country’s business registry, a process that doesn’t require a license from the central bank as long as the firm doesn’t hold any customer funds.Ī spokesperson for the Bank of Lithuania told Forbes that Bifinity “is not supervised or licensed” by the bank. Such issues have only increased Binance’s reliance on its Lithuanian operation. Binance said at the time it intended to “defend our platform vigorously.” The SEC’s allegations include that Binance misused customer funds and diverted them to a trading entity controlled by Zhao. ![]() It is under investigation for fraud and anti-money laundering in France, and last month the SEC accused the company and Zhao of widespread fraud and filed more than a dozen charges against both. Many payment providers, such as Paysafe - which processed its Euro-denominated bank transfers - are now dropping Binance as it faces headwinds in Europe, and around the globe. “They set it up in a place with weaker standards, and surprise, surprise, there's gambling in Casablanca.”Īnil Kashyap, advisor to the European Central Bank. Responding to questions about the payments to Zhao’s bank account, accusations of commingling customer funds and the private jet, Matthews denied the transactions indicated anything untoward, telling Forbes that “auditors issued unqualified opinions regarding 20 financial statements.” He added that Bifinity operates “in an open and transparent manner” and “manages the relationships with third party regulated payment providers and banks.” Simon Matthews, Binance’s PR director for Europe, told Forbes that the company “will defend position vigorously” against the class action claims. Bifinity, Zhao and his executives are now being accused in a previously unreported class-action lawsuit of making "materially false” statements that artificially inflated the publicly listed firm’s stock price. But the effort, which involved acquiring a Nasdaq-listed company with a British crypto license, collapsed. "If you look to the past, there are clear patterns.In addition, Forbes found, Bifinity was crucial to Binance’s attempts to get regulated in the United Kingdom - a key goal for Zhao that would have given Binance coveted legitimacy in a global financial hub. "I see a lot of parallels with bitcoin's past cycles with bitcoin's 2013, 20 bull markets," CZ said. While CZ said he couldn't accurately predict the future and warned of the dangers of trying to forecast the bitcoin price, he pointed to bitcoin's previous boom and bust cycles as one reason for his 2025 bull run price prediction that could see the bitcoin price eclipse its last peak of almost $70,000 per bitcoin. Last month, analysts at JPMorgan said they expect bitcoin's 2024 halving to double the production cost of new bitcoin, potentially setting a new bitcoin price floor. "The year after bitcoin halving is usually the bull year," CZ said during a question-and-answer Twitter Spaces broadcast this week, forecasting the ongoing bitcoin and crypto price winter could continue for at least another 18 months.īitcoin's upcoming so-called halving-currently scheduled for April next year-will see the number of new bitcoins issued to those who secure the bitcoin network, known as miners, cut by half from the current block reward of 6.25 bitcoin to just 3.125 bitcoin.
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