Numerous cryptocurrency exchanges made a lot of news this year. However, Malta’s Binance exchange turned several heads with its exponential growth. With expansion as one of its primary goals, Binance was seen steering into several countries over the past few years. Despite incurring increased profits through its primary platform, Binance failed to accumulate the required rate of profit through its Uganda wing.
Binance.com To Continue Serving Uganda Citizens
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange has spread its wings into several territories. The Changpeng Zhao-led crypto exchange dived into the Ugandan market back in June 2018. However, the platform has decided to pull the plug on Binance Uganda starting from 11 November 2020. Binance wrote an elaborate blog post prepping its Ugandan users for this imminent closure.
Binance Uganda halted registrations of new accounts as well as deposits on 28 October. However, these users were allowed to trade all the available crypto assets and withdraw funds from their accounts. Users would be able to withdraw their funds through the Ugandan shilling [UGX]. All the trading activities would be stopped at 23:59 UTC on 11 November. Once again users would be given the option of withdrawing or accessing their funds.
A “Hard Shutdown” would be implemented after 28 November 2020, after which users would no longer be able to access or withdraw funds from their accounts.
The blog post also elaborated on the reason behind the closing of this platform. The post read,
“Binance Uganda thanks our loyal users for using our services and would strongly encourage everyone to use Binance.com going forward for all their cryptocurrency and trading needs.”
The exchange also pointed out that Binance.com already supported UGX and hence users of Uganda didn’t have to worry about the conversion of currency.
Furthermore, speaking to a news portal the founder and CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao revealed that Binance Uganda harbored very few customers as most of them opted for Binance.com. CZ even on to label the Ugandan branch of Binance a “loss center”.
Binance has been shutting down several branches over the last few weeks. Back in October, the Malta-based exchange announced that it would close Binance Jersey. Once again since Binance.com supports GBP deposits, the platform decided to pull a plug on its Jersey branch. The platform is expected to undergo a hard shutdown by the end of November.
