In 2021, Binance was put under investigation by both the United States Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service on allegations of money laundering and tax offenses.

[4] The company was founded in 2017 in China but moved its servers and headquarters out of the country in advance of the Chinese government's ban on cryptocurrency trading in September 2017.

[25] In January 2019, Binance announced that it had partnered with Israel-based payment processor Simplex to enable cryptocurrency purchases with debit and credit cards, including Visa and Mastercard.

[27] Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said the hackers "used a variety of techniques, including phishing, viruses and other attacks" and structured their transaction "in a way that passed our existing security checks.

[36] On 21 February 2020, the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) issued a public statement responding to media reports referring to Binance as a 'Malta-based' cryptocurrency company.

[38][39] On 28 October 2020, Forbes staff released leaked documents showing that Binance and Changpeng Zhao created an elaborate corporate structure designed to intentionally deceive United States regulators and secretly profit from cryptocurrency investors located in the country.

[40] Binance officially blocks access from IP addresses located in the United States, but "potential customers would be taught how to evade geographic restrictions", Forbes claimed.

[40] In May 2021 it was reported that Binance was under investigation by both the Internal Revenue Service and the United States Department of Justice on allegations of money laundering and tax offenses.

[44] In March 2022, amidst the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Binance's CEO Changpeng Zhao, refused to ban users from Russia, citing "financial freedom".

[48] In April, Reuters reported that, in 2021, Binance shared information with Rosfinmonitoring about funds raised by late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's network.

[57][58] On 13 June 2022 Binance announced that users would, for an unspecified period of time, be unable to withdraw their funds held in bitcoin, as the value of cryptocurrencies suffered serious declines.

[64][65] On 8 November 2022, Binance offered to buy rival cryptocurrency exchange FTX's non-US operations (FTX.com) to help cover the latter's liquidity crunch.

According to The Wall Street Journal, an internal investigation within Binance found that a VIP client of the company, a trading and investment firm named DWF Labs, had previously advertised its ability to manipulate the market by generating "believable" artificial volume to increase the price of tokens.

[76] According to a 2024 study by John Griffin, a finance professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Binance is the most popular exchange used in pig butchering scams.

[107] In May 2024, FINTRAC announced that it had imposed a $4.32 million dollar fine on Binance for violating Canadian money laundering and terrorist financing laws.

[110]In January 2025, French authorities opened a judicial investigation into Binance for potential involvement in money laundering, drug trafficking, and tax fraud from 2019 to 2024.

This follows earlier probes in 2023, including Binance’s $4.3 billion fine by U.S. authorities and the resignation of CEO Changpeng Zhao after he served prison time.

[111] In April 2021, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority in Germany warned that the company risked fines for not releasing an investor prospectus for the stock tokens it has issued.

[114] In August 2022, India's Enforcement Directorate froze the assets of WazirX, an exchange owned by Binance, as part of a money laundering investigation.

[116] On December 28, Financial Intelligence Unit (India) recommended blocking the URLs of nine crypto entities, including Binance on the grounds of non compliance to the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA).

[118] In June 2024, Binance was imposed with a fine of US$ 2.25 million by the Financial Intelligence Unit, for operating in India in violation of local anti-money laundering regulations.

[125][126] On 28 February 2024, two Binance executives, Nadeem Anjarwalla and Tigran Gambaryan, were detained by Nigeria's government on allegations of illegal operations and forex manipulation.

[131] SEC Chair Emilio Aquino emphasized the potential threat to investors' security posed by continued access to Binance's platform.

Despite Binance's significant presence and activity in the Philippines, the SEC aims to provide investors with ample time to transition their investments to authorized platforms.

[133] In January 2021, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority began requiring firms dealing with cryptoassets to register in order to comply with anti-money laundering rules.

[135][136] In June 2023, the FCA canceled unused permissions granted to Binance Markets Limited, meaning the company “can no longer provide regulated activities and products” in the UK.

[138] In May 2021, Bloomberg News reported that Binance was under investigation by the United States Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service for money laundering and tax evasion.

"[141] Arkham Intelligence provided data in January 2023 that identified “an alleged nexus of money laundering” from a much smaller exchange called Bitzlato through intermediate wallets of Binance.

[143] On 1 March 2023, US Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen, and Roger Marshall wrote a letter to Binance describing the exchange as "a hotbed of illegal financial activity that has facilitated over $10 billion in payments to criminals and sanctions evaders."

Binance.US cited the SEC’s civil suit as “an unfortunate example” of the agency’s “aggressive attempts to cripple our industry.”[152] In October 2023, coinciding with the outbreak of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, Binance and Tether were described as a source of terrorist funding by US senator Cynthia Lummis and US Representative French Hill, with a letter calling for the Department of Justice to crack down on the exchange.