作者：黑色马里奥

On June 24, Binance withdrew its MiCA license application in Greece. According to Binance, after carefully evaluating the status and timeline of the Greek approval process, it decided to withdraw the MiCA application submitted to the Hellenic Capital Market Commission (HCMC) and will now seek authorization in another EU member state. It also stressed that user assets remain safe and accessible, and it will directly notify affected European users of the subsequent arrangements.

Original post: https://x.com/binance/status/2069791259812839895

There’s actually a background to this that many people are unaware of: in less than a week, on July 1, 2026, the EU MiCA transitional period will officially end.

According to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), from July 1 this year onward, crypto-asset service providers without MiCA authorization that continue to offer services to EU customers will be in violation of EU law. They must cease the relevant services and implement an orderly exit or client migration plan.

Figure: ESMA Official MiCA Timeline

Image source: gravityteam.co

Even if you hold local financial licenses in some European countries, without MiCA authorization after July 1 you will be unable to conduct crypto-asset business in Europe. This means you are given until July 1 to prepare and adjust.

This is actually very unfavorable for Binance. For Binance, the July 1 date is essentially a hard boundary. If the Greek application fails to produce a clear outcome before the deadline, its business arrangements, user communications, institutional partnerships, and regulatory narrative in Europe will all come under pressure.

As for Binance, it submitted its MiCA application to Greece's HCMC back in January 2026. I estimate that at the time it believed the approval would most likely be completed before July 1. But now the deadline is bearing down, while the Greek side remains ambiguous and has yet to reach a conclusion.

Even earlier, on June 16, Reuters, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that Greek regulators were expected to reject Binance’s MiCA application. Binance subsequently responded that it had maintained constructive cooperation with regulators over the past 18 months, and its understanding was that the HCMC had completed its review and considered the application to be MiCA-compliant, and that the application had been reviewed at the ESMA level.

Figure: Reuters article Original text: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/binance-set-lose-eu-licence-bid-permission-offer-services-bloc-sources-say-2026-06-16/

In other words, Binance still believes it has a compliance foundation, but the Greek side’s stance is ambiguous, with the likelihood of rejection appearing to be even greater.

So for Binance, Greece has effectively been an unreliable pig teammate. Withdrawing the application in advance on the 24th amounts to “cutting losses early,” and it will now seek authorization in another EU member state.

In fact, Greece itself would certainly have wanted the Binance matter to land on its own turf. After all, as a small country, attracting a major fintech project like Binance could potentially bring investment, tax revenue, employment, and so on.

But why has Greece been so reluctant and hesitant in this matter?

We can dig deeper into the chain of interests behind this.

What exactly is Binance withdrawing?

Let’s focus on the announcement Binance issued to its European users, confirming that it has withdrawn the MiCA application filed in Greece. As we mentioned at the beginning, we won’t go over that again.

The core information in the announcement has three layers:

First, what Binance is withdrawing is the MiCA application submitted to the Hellenic Capital Market Commission (HCMC).

Second, Binance will turn to another EU member state to continue seeking authorization.

Third, Binance stresses that user assets remain safe and accessible, but some European users may see an impact on service arrangements depending on their country of residence and account status. Binance will directly contact the relevant users through official channels to explain the next steps.

Looking at it this way, these three points together indicate that Binance has not announced its withdrawal from the European market, nor has it abandoned MiCA. What it has given up is the route of using “Greece as the EU licensing gateway.” This means Binance still desires, and is confident in, obtaining MiCA approval.

Focusing on MiCA, it is actually different from local financial licenses in European countries; it’s more like a pan-EU “business license.”

For instance, in the early days, if an exchange wanted to do business in Europe, the common path was to obtain various forms of registration or licensing in different countries — such as France’s DASP, Italy’s OAM registration, local registration in Spain, Cyprus’s CASP, and so on. Each country had different regimes and varying regulatory intensity, allowing companies to spread their footprint across multiple points.

After MiCA comes into effect, with its unified authorization and EU passporting mechanism, once a crypto-asset service provider secures MiCA authorization in one EU member state, it can theoretically serve the entire EU market through the passporting mechanism.

In other words, if Binance had obtained a license in Greece, the result would not merely have been access to Greece, but a passport to all 27 member states.

Therefore, Binance’s withdrawal of its Greek application cannot simply be understood as a local regulatory approval roadblock. It actually affects Binance’s entire path to operating legally across the EU.

In fact, ESMA had already issued a clear reminder on April 17, 2026, that the MiCA transitional period would end across the entire EU on July 1, 2026. After that date, crypto-asset service providers without MiCA authorization that continue to provide relevant services to EU clients will violate EU law. ESMA also requires unlicensed entities to prepare an orderly exit plan in advance, including notifying clients, arranging asset transfers, migrating to an authorized CASP, or having clients move to self-custody wallets.

So June 24 is only a week away from July 1. Binance’s withdrawal of the Greek application at this juncture carries a strong sense of an emergency response.

From publicly available information, the wind had already started to shift on the Greek side in mid-June.

As we mentioned at the start, on June 16, Reuters, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that the MiCA application Binance submitted to Greek regulators was expected to be rejected. If that outcome had been confirmed, Binance would have been unable to continue serving EU customers via the Greek route after July 1. After the report emerged, Binance quickly responded. It said it had maintained constructive cooperation with regulators for the past 18 months, had invested significant compliance resources, and, based on its own understanding, the HCMC had completed its review and considered the application compliant with MiCA requirements, with the application also having gone through review at the ESMA level.

So while sources on the regulatory side were signaling a potential Greek rejection, Binance was emphasizing, “We believe the application meets the requirements, and we have not received any formal contrary signal from the HCMC.”

This actually shows that Binance’s application process had entered an ambiguous state — the official result had not yet been made public, but the market had already sensed the negative expectations. The applicant was still defending its compliance narrative, but the time window no longer allowed for a protracted tug-of-war.

By June 23, Greek media outlet eKathimerini further reported that Binance had withdrawn two applications submitted to the HCMC and the Bank of Greece, and said the entire process was internally considered “politicized.” The report also mentioned that the Greek government held a positive attitude toward Binance’s investment, but Greek banking advisors and the European Central Bank expressed negative opinions.

After Binance’s announcement on June 24, it was confirmed that Binance had proactively withdrawn its Greek application and turned to another EU member state to continue pursuing MiCA authorization.

For Binance, if it had waited for Greece to formally issue a negative decision, it would carry the clear label of having its “MiCA application rejected.” That label would affect its subsequent applications in other EU member states and also the judgment of banks, institutional clients, and users toward it. By proactively withdrawing now, although it still reveals the failure of the Greek route, it at least retains the right to explain proactively.

Externally, it can say it still supports MiCA, still values Europe, and will continue to search for a clearer and more sustainable compliance path. Internally, it can buy time to arrange for EU users and mitigate the impact of withdrawal panic and service disruptions.

When dealing with other regulators, it can also avoid entering the next round of negotiations with a formal rejection document in hand.

So Binance’s withdrawal of its Greek MiCA application essentially means the path of using Greece as Binance’s European licensing gateway has reached a dead end, but it still leaves some room for the next stage of arranging its presence.

From Cyprus retreat to Greek retreat

As early as June 2023, Binance’s Cyprus entity applied to be deregistered from the local crypto-asset service provider register. At the time, Binance’s explanation was that to prepare for the implementation of EU MiCA, it wanted to concentrate resources on fewer regulated entities. This was, in fact, the starting point of Binance’s European strategic shift.

So Binance’s retreat from Cyprus was essentially a reshuffling of the table for the MiCA era. It wanted to reduce peripheral outposts and concentrate firepower on a few key markets.

However, a major U.S. case in November 2023 became an adverse factor for Binance's compliance. At that time, Binance reached a settlement exceeding $4 billion with the U.S. Department of Justice, the Treasury Department, the CFTC, and other agencies. DOJ documents showed that Binance admitted to violations related to anti-money laundering, unlicensed money transmission, and sanctions, and CZ also admitted to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program, resigned as CEO, and served several months in prison.

Actually, the impact of this matter on Binance goes beyond just the fine. For an exchange, a fine is a one‑time cost; reputational liabilities are long‑term costs.

Under CZ, Binance was almost the most quintessential hyper‑growth machine in the global crypto market – rapid product iteration, fast market entry, rapid user growth – but it often tread on the edges of regulation. After Richard Teng took over, Binance’s worldview became one of compliance, regulatory cooperation, institutional governance, transparency and long‑termism.

In a regulatory system like Europe’s, a company’s historical compliance problems don’t simply vanish just because the CEO changes or the fines are paid. Regulators will bring all potential risk factors into consideration. Were these issues caused by the founder’s personal style, or by the corporate governance structure? Has there been a fundamental change now?

If the MiCA passport is approved, is there a risk that problems will reappear further down the line – after all, that could affect the EU’s financial system.

From that moment on, Binance’s European licensing story became more of a trust‑repair battle.

So in January 2026, Binance bet on Greece.

Why Greece?

In fact, Greece’s appeal to Binance lay in its concentrated approval resources, strong political willingness to attract investment, and costs lower than traditional financial centres – a country that offers both the institutional value of the EU passport system and potentially more room to manoeuvre than jurisdictions with stronger regulatory traditions and higher political scrutiny. At the time, there were also very few home‑grown MiCA benchmark cases, and Binance wanted to become that benchmark case itself.

Richard Teng had also publicly stated that Greece’s workforce and safety conditions gave it an advantage when selecting a European regulatory headquarters. When the CEO of a global exchange talks publicly about a country’s advantages, it usually means the company has already woven that location into its core strategic narrative.

For its part, Greece actually welcomed having Binance as a partner.

Greece is an EU member state, but it is not a traditional centre of financial regulatory power in Europe. It wants to attract investment and also to shape its own fintech image.

After all, a major exchange setting up a European hub locally can bring jobs, tax revenue, and legal and accounting service income, as well as help package Greece as a new fintech and crypto hub in Southern Europe. So a project like Binance was always going to have a natural appeal for Greece.

But where does the pressure on Greece come from?

In fact, MiCA was designed to eliminate the regulatory arbitrage that existed in Europe’s fragmented crypto regulation.

Before MiCA was fully implemented, European crypto regulation was fragmented. Each country had its own registration system, some with high barriers, some with low. Some leaned more towards anti‑money‑laundering registration, while others had already started building more complete regulatory frameworks for digital asset service providers. For large exchanges, you could get a licence in France, one in Italy, one in Spain, one in Cyprus, and explore Poland, Sweden and Lithuania as well.

The advantage of that approach was flexibility – if one country tightened its regulation, another might not be a problem; if a licence was difficult to get in one country, you could apply in another instead. In earlier years, many crypto platforms survived in Europe this way.

Once MiCA was implemented, that logic was completely rewritten.

MiCA’s defining feature is a unified gateway. Once an exchange is authorised in a single EU member state, it can theoretically serve the entire EU market through the passport mechanism. In other words, if Greece were to issue a licence to Binance, it would affect not just local users in Greece, but market access across all 27 EU member states.

Image: MiCA passport mechanism + CASP authorisation process explained

Image source: blog.amlbot.com

So if a highly controversial exchange with heavy historical compliance baggage and massive global scale were able to quickly obtain MiCA authorisation through a relatively small member state with limited regulatory resources but a stronger desire to attract investment, countries like Germany, the Netherlands, France and Ireland – which have stronger regulatory capacity and more complex financial systems – would inevitably see that as a lowering of standards.

Once that door is opened, other large crypto platforms will follow suit. Instead of seeking out the most mature regulatory regimes, they will look for the easiest to communicate with, the most eager to attract investment, and the most in need of an industrial story. MiCA, which was meant to solve regulatory arbitrage, could end up instead becoming a tool for a new round of it.

So, on the surface, MiCA applications are decided by each country individually – Greece’s HCMC, for example – but in practice they still have to watch what ESMA and the ECB say.

Although ESMA does not directly issue licences to crypto‑asset service providers – the actual licensing is done by each member state’s local competent authority – ESMA has a coordination and standard‑setting role. It must ensure that when different member states implement MiCA, the same rules are not applied with wildly different degrees of strictness from one country to the next.

The ECB also does not have a direct veto over crypto licences, but its influence is very strong in the contexts of financial stability, banking system risks, stablecoins, payment systems and macro‑prudential supervision. Especially when a large exchange enters the EU’s single market, it concerns not just a crypto platform, but user assets, banking channels, payment clearing, stablecoin liquidity, and the potential spillover of systemic risk.

So when Greek media talk about “politicisation”, it would be more accurate to say this approval process has been placed against a backdrop that includes EU financial sovereignty, regulatory reputation, competition among member states’ interests, and a trust deficit over the compliance of a major exchange.

Which other EU member state might Binance be referring to?

So far, Coinbase has announced it received its MiCA licence through Luxembourg’s CSSF, and Kraken has obtained MiCA authorisation through the Central Bank of Ireland.

Following that kind of path, once a platform completes MiCA authorisation in one EU member state, it can serve the entire EU market through the passport mechanism. Going forward, their biggest advantage is that after 1 July, they can use regulatory certainty to compete for institutional clients, compliance‑sensitive users, and banking, payment‑institution and fiat on‑/off‑ramp partners.

For Binance, losing short‑term revenue in Europe is not necessarily fatal. Binance still has global liquidity, emerging‑market coverage and a full product line. But Europe is a showcase market for global regulatory credibility. If it cannot get MiCA, I think that could slow down the process of Binance’s legitimacy‑repair.

Beyond the exchange business, this could also spill over into banking relationships, institutional money, stablecoins, RWA deployment, and how other jurisdictions perceive Binance’s compliance capabilities. For a platform that is transitioning out of the aggressive expansion era of CZ, the time cost of rebuilding trust may matter more than the loss of short‑term trading volumes.

In the long run, this will benefit platforms with higher compliance costs, more transparent governance structures, and lighter historical baggage. It will also benefit TradFi‑background institutions entering crypto custody, tokenisation, and payment and clearing. Under a unified regulatory framework, the market will increasingly value platforms that are accepted by banks, by institutions, and by regulators over the long term.

On the other hand, some high‑frequency trading, high‑risk‑appetite, and non‑compliance‑sensitive demand may continue to flow to DEXs, non‑custodial wallets, or non‑EU platforms. Compliant platforms absorb institutional money, while on‑chain and offshore markets absorb more native and aggressive crypto demand – this kind of stratification will become increasingly pronounced.

And for Binance, which is racing to find new partners, I think the next stop may well be France.

In fact, Binance has already completed its DASP registration with France’s AMF; Binance France SAS has been on the AMF whitelist since May 2022, with a scope of services that covers custody, fiat buying and selling, crypto‑to‑crypto trading and exchange platform operation. Moreover, France is one of the earliest EU member states to establish a framework for digital asset service providers. Its regulatory experience, fintech policy narrative and market influence are all more mature than Greece’s.

By analogy with Coinbase choosing Luxembourg and Kraken choosing Ireland, Binance also needs to find a member state that has both the regulatory capacity to host its business and the ability to support the scale of its European operations.

Of course, the French path does not mean an easier approval. France has stronger regulatory resources, and the scrutiny is likely to be stricter. After all, France places great importance on its fintech narrative and on its regulatory reputation. And the old DASP registration does not equal authorisation under MiCA. Having been registered in France in the past merely shows Binance has a certain local foundation; it cannot be directly equated with having a MiCA licence in hand.

So when Binance withdrew its application from Greece, it was pulling out of an obstructed entry point and pivoting to a member state more likely to carry forward its European compliance strategy. France is currently the most discussed option in the market and one of the easiest paths to understand. It’s just that this road will be slower, more expensive, and a far greater test of whether Binance can truly repair its trust deficit within the global regulatory system.

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