Binance Drops ‘Decentralization’ Idea, Will Announce Headquarters Soon, Says CZ

After undergoing regulatory scrutiny from many countries around the world, Binance – one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges – has abandoned its philosophy of “decentralization” and is about to announce its official headquarters.

The information was given by the platform’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao, CZ, in an interview with Financial Times Crypto and Digital Assets Summit.

As CZ highlighted, Binance has already defined where its “traditional corporate structure” will be: “we will announce this soon”, he said.

“If you want to be a centralized exchange, like Binance.com is, and you want access to traditional banking […], you need to step back a bit and follow the rules of traditional financial systems. You need to have a corporate headquarters, a parent company and get licenses.”

Binance will have headquarters to serve regulators

Also during the interview, the billionaire executive acknowledged that the company needed to change the course of business to be able to operate globally.

As reported by Cryptheory, last year, regulators in the UK, Japan, Cayman Islands, Singapore, Italy and several others warned about the irregularity of the exchange’s activities.

Initially, CZ claimed that the company did not have an official headquarters because its operations were “decentralised”. Naturally, this justification did not convince the regulators who began to tighten the siege against the exchange.

Since then, Binance has taken a number of steps to try to reduce regulatory pressure. And now, it seems, it will announce its host country.

“When we started, we wanted to embrace the decentralized philosophy of no offices, no headquarters, no corporate entities… None of this is necessary if you run pure cryptocurrency. But as soon as you want to get licenses, you have to have what we call traditional structures, which we do now.”

CZ further noted that the company now has licensed entities in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Bahrain.

It is worth noting that in early April the CEO and founder of Binance praised France’s “pro-crypto regulations”. Recently, the country’s president, Emmanuel Macron, spoke about the cryptocurrency market in Europe.

For Macron, technologies like blockchain, NFTs and the metaverse represent opportunities that cannot be missed. In addition, he defended that the sector be properly regulated, but without harm to innovation. Above all, Macron stressed that he wants Europe to assume a leading position in this market.