The FCA has no enforceable jurisdiction over Binance, because Binance's physical and financial assets are not in the U.K. - except they do have an office that could be seized, 3 Beeston Pl, London. It might be no more than a token office though.

They seem to have a number of offices in places, one per country. The US one is in Fresno, CA.

Their headquarters is in Malta.

They sell derivatives, and they are headquartered in Malta. Who actually uses good or services from these people?

Do Binance officers, directors, or employees ever plan on transiting the UK or the soil of it’s allies? Becoming persona non grata with a nation state is a Big Deal.

Well, it's limited in scope as long as they don't intentionally go out of their way to circumvent the ban. UK citizens can still access binance's offering via a VPN, although it is not legal. You can't make the entire executive team non grata because your citizens are using a VPN to access a banned product.

The whole thing with this is it shows how powerless nationstates have become in their ability to regulate these kind of things. Binance has the possibility of being regulated to death, but what about the decentralized derivitives exchange DxDy or Sythetix? Here in the US it is illegal as a retail investor to have more than 3x trading leverage on securities. I can get access to 10x leverage on Sythetix as a retail trader which is technically illegal, but since it's not a security it's in this weird gray area. Even if the US finally starts understanding the possibilities inherent in crypto, they wouldn't be able to stop it even if they brought the whole weight of the US nationstate ontop of it. It's decentralized. You'd have to shut down Eth, Matics, DOT, Solana, Etc. To stop these kind of exchanges. Each of these orgs might have a few people to arrest or point too, but are largely 'Decentralized' and already on the blockchain.

>You can't make the entire executive team non grata because your citizens are using a VPN to access a banned product.

The USA did exactly this with a large publicly traded UK company. They arrested the executives the moment they touched down in the US on a transfer flight.

The CEO is now going to jail: https://casinobeats.com/2020/03/26/pokerstars-founder-isai-s...

Haven't heard of this before, but after some research they willingly didn't comply with any of the regulation. They allowed money to enter from US bank accounts. Binance has verification for the Fiat onramp for UK citizens. What i was discussing above was using already purchased crypto and trading it on binance on a VPN using leverage/Margin. A.) pretty unavoiable and B.) pretty untraceable.

> UK citizens can still access binance's offering via a VPN

Are Binance not required to make would-be customers jump through all sorts KYC shaped hoops?

If you require deposits in fiat. If you already have crypto you don't need any amount of verification. You can utilize a BTC atm and create an account with only an email.

Who owns the ATM? That entity will be required to comply with the AML and KYC financial regulations of the host nation state, regardless if you ever transact fiat.

> The FCA has no enforceable jurisdiction over Binance

If it goes so fart that regulators start send subpoenas or other legal requests to banks Binance uses, those banks will comply if they want to have transactions in UK. Alternative is that all money transfers from UK will cease. Not only Binance would be cut from the UK but also other bank customers.

Malta ... the last great bastion in clean money and banking.

/s

> They sell derivatives... Who actually uses good or services from these people?

Are you referring to just the BML subsidiary or Binance Group? Binance does provide its own coin (BNB), which can be used to pay fees on their exchange. That they provide access to an exchange people pay to use, seems like a service.

> LONDON, June 28 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Regulators have gotten their heads around crypto assets. The next challenge is getting their hands on the companies. Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority on Saturday said that Binance Markets, the local arm of the world’s largest crypto exchange, was “not permitted to undertake any regulated activity in the UK”. Shortly after, the company said on Twitter that the notice has “no direct impact on the services offered on Binance.com”.

> How can that be? In general, the FCA can only regulate companies that are either based in Britain or that actively promote products there. A bitcoin trading platform registered elsewhere doesn’t necessarily count: according to Forbes Binance is based in the Cayman Islands. Founder Changpeng Zhao sought regulatory approval for Binance Markets, but its main services are unregulated and offered instead by the parent group. It’s not clear what he did to irk the FCA, or whether his customers will care. What’s obvious, though, is that the watchdog lacks powers to police a fast-growing part of the financial sector. (By Liam Proud)

Futile UK crypto curb flags regulatory blind spot

https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/futile-uk-crypto-curb-...

Right, just like Facebook is certain to adhere to European privacy laws.

It’s apples and oranges. As a regulator, the FCA has a lot more teeth than the Information Commissioner. The FCA also has a much more persuasive enforcement mechanism: frozen bank accounts. It’s a lot easier for facebook to keep servers outside of the UK than it is for BML to keep money out of the UK. Any prohibited transaction with a UK citizen is now a risk not just for the potential regulatory headache it might provoke but for the chain of accounts it risks flagging to authorities.

This might well be by law, but in practise we don't see that, which i would argue is of higher meaning.