The Russian cryptocurrency exchange CommEx, which took over from Binance, has formally declared it is closing and has stopped accepting deposits.
CommEx is shutting down its platform after purchasing Binance’s Russian operations in September 2023 in an undisclosed transaction.
On March 25, CommEx announced on its official Telegram group that it was stopping deposits and new registrations right away.
The company stated, “We must announce the gradual suspension of operations on the CommEX platform,” and advised users to take their money off of the site right now and deposit it into wallets owned by third parties.
The suspension roadmap states that CommEx will cease supporting futures trading on March 28 and will begin to halt peer-to-peer exchange on April 2. CommEx intends to suspend its website by May 10 and shut down the spot trading platform entirely on April 23.
According to the release, “User accounts that retain assets after May 10, 2024 will be subject to an asset management fee of 1% of assets.”
As previously reported, when senior local officials, such as vice president of Eastern Europe Gleb Kostarev, resigned, Binance made suggestions that it will leave Russia in early September 2023.
A few weeks later, Binance declared that it had sold the entirety of its operations in Russia to the recently established exchange CommEx, although it would not reveal any information regarding the executives or founders of CommEx.
After that, CommEx stressed that company functioned independently of Binance while acknowledging that a few of its key personnel had previously worked for Binance.
Local cryptocurrency aficionados, who saw many similarities between the Binance and CommEx websites, immediately began talking about the unexplained acquisition. They dubbed the new exchange a “Russian version” of Binance.US.
With 6.9% of all visits, Russia accounted for the largest share of users on Binance.com at the time of the sale.
The transaction between Binance and CommEx occurred when former CEO Changpeng Zhao of Binance was attempting to persuade a US judge to throw out a case that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had brought in June 2023.
Allegations that Binance functioned illegally in the US and offered the sale of unregistered securities led to the SEC suing the exchange.
After that, in November 2023, Zhao resigned from Binance and entered a guilty plea. After a judge denied his request to see family in the United Arab Emirates, he is currently being held in the United States on bail with a $175 million bond. Zhao’s sentence was moved from its original February 2024 start date to late April.
The collapse of CommEx coincides with increased international scrutiny of Binance. The Philippines restricted local users’ access to Binance on March 25 due to worries about the company’s unlicensed activities in the nation.
