Binance Stops Cryptocurrency Margin Trading Against GBP, AUD, EUR

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, said on Monday that it would stop offering cryptocurrency margin trading involving the Australian dollar, euro and sterling.

The cryptocurrency exchange's curbs on its services come as a string of regulators across the globe have been issuing warnings about the platform and some of the services it offers.

From Aug 10, Binance will suspend margin borrowing for Bitcoin, Ether and other large cryptocurrencies and their Australian dollar, euro and sterling pairs, the company said in a statement. The platform will cancel all pending orders, automatically settle any open trade and delist the pairs on Aug 12. As of July 27 (13:30pm IST), Bitcoin price in India stood at Rs. 27.58 lakh and Ethereum price in India stood at Rs. 1.63 lakh

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have surged in popularity among retail investors during the global pandemic, prompting regulators to put trading platforms under increased scrutiny despite the fact that most cryptocurrency trading is unregulated.

Financial authorities in Britain, Japan, Italy and Thailand have all raised concerns about Binance for carrying out unauthorized financial services.

After a German watchdog's warning in April, Binance stopped offering stock tokens to its users earlier this month.

The platform's chief executive, Changpeng Zhao, also said in a tweet on Sunday that it was limiting the maximum leverage for trading cryptocurrency futures for new users to 20 times the money a user puts up from 100.

That came just after FTX, a crypto exchange based in Hong Kong, also cut down leverage to 20 times to curb speculative trading with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

© Thomson Reuters 2021