On Thursday, Sweden’s financial watchdog said that it has registered cryptocurrency exchange Binance as a financial institute in the country.
According to Per Nordkvist, deputy head of the Financial Supervisory Authority’s banking branch, the registration enables Binance to build a website in Swedish and promote itself directly to customers in the Nordic country.
Over half of the global cryptocurrency trading market is dominated by Binance. It currently has regulatory licences or approvals in 15 jurisdictions, including numerous European Union states, Australia, and New Zealand, due to its registration in Sweden.
The massive Binance exchange, which is at the center of the company’s operations, processed trades worth more than $22 trillion last year.
Binance has chosen not to disclose the whereabouts of the exchange, which was established by CEO Changpeng Zhao in Shanghai in 2017.
The Binance exchange is still mostly out of the public’s eye, according to a Reuters review of Binance’s business records in 14 nations from December.
For instance, the amount of money flowing between the units and Binance is not disclosed in the public filings. Several of the units appear to have little activity, according to the Reuters study.
According to a statement released by Binance on Thursday and published on Twitter by its CEO, Swedish citizens now have legal access to services such as cryptocurrency trading and the ability to deposit and withdraw euros to and from the exchange.
However, according to Nordkvist, just because Binance Nordics AB is registered locally does not imply that the firm is totally within the watchdog’s supervision.
Companies that are registered, as opposed to those that are permitted to provide financial services, are required to give the Swedish watchdog information on anti-money laundering measures and nothing else.
“Binance continues to demonstrate its commitment to work closely with regulatory agencies to uphold global standards,” Binance’s head of Europe and MENA, Richard Teng, said in a blog post on Wednesday.
