Cryptocurrency exchange CommEX may turn out to be a technical company to transfer the Russian part of Binance’s business. Experts interviewed told ForkLog about this.
Who are CommEX?
The launch of the CommEX exchange took place on September 26 and so far little is known about it.
Introducing CommEX! 🎉
We’re thrilled to announce our launch today. With leading crypto exchange experience in Spot, Futures, Simple Futures and P2P markets your trading experience will be revolutionized.
Stay tuned for more, coming soon! ⏰
👉https://t.co/ear49VDTOD pic.twitter.com/JpC4Hi9UDX— CommEX (@CommEX_com) September 26, 2023
According to the Terms of Use, CommEX Holding Limited is registered in Seychelles. In this case, Hong Kong legislation is applied to resolve legal disputes. Binance uses a similar practice.
The official website states that CommEX is supported by certain “leading crypto venture capital investors.”
The exchange does not provide services to citizens of the USA, EU (with the exception of Finland), Singapore, Iran, Cuba, Syria, North Korea, as well as persons living in Crimea.
At the time of writing, in addition to spot trading of 25 USDT pairs, CommEX provides futures products and P2P services.
According to Nikita Zuborev, a senior analyst at the BestChange aggregator, the site’s domain was purchased from resellers only on September 22.
“They have a problem with numbering in the documents, as if everything was done in haste. A chat for the Russian-speaking community appeared literally before my eyes, when Russian-speaking users flocked to the only English-language chat before,” he said in a comment to ForkLog.
Now the owners, managers and beneficiaries of the company are reliably unknown. Therefore, experts do not rule out that Binance simply “changed its sign under pressure from the regulator, but inside everything will remain as it was.”
“Otherwise why would anyone give discounts on trading for BNB? It’s almost as if McDonald’s discount cards would continue to operate at “Tasty and period,” says Indefibank CEO Sergei Mendeleev.
Founder and CEO of the BitOK service Dmitry Machikhin agrees with him:
“Commex is a technical company and was created specifically to take over the “Russian” part of Binance and thereby save the business.”
According to his information, the buyers were citizens of Kazakhstan, “coming from the Eurasian Commodity Exchange.”
“Representatives of Binance, who have now left the company, were previously actively engaged in hiring personnel for a certain “Russian subsidiary” of Binance in Kazakhstan. Probably, [изначально] the scenario was different. But now it’s like this: nominally or actually, the user base that will remain with the “new Russian-Kazakh” Binance during the year of transition will be owned by a Kazakh structure, and without the right of repurchase,” Machikhin wrote in his Telegram channel.
Binance in Kazakhstan owns a subsidiary, BN KZ Technologies, which received a regulatory license in the fall of 2022. In addition, the exchange announced plans to launch a local Bitcoin platform in the country by mid-2023.
What should Russian Binance clients be wary of?
According to Nikita Zuborev, when transferring data about completed verification from one company to another, clients may potentially experience their loss or leakage. There may be difficulties in interacting with support if funds are transferred between exchanges.
There may also be problems with AML-checks in other services.
“If funds from Binance wallets have a more or less good reputation, then what risks there will be for transactions from the wallets of the new company is unknown. Here it is worth remembering the conditional Garantex, sanctions against which overnight made thousands of wallets toxic – even if the users themselves are law-abiding, before the law all their cryptocurrency became associated with the drug trade,” the expert pointed out.
Additionally, phishing and scams targeting Binance users may increase in the coming weeks. Zuborev recommended refraining from working with both trading platforms until the situation is clarified.
In turn, the founder of the law firm GMT Legal, Andrey Tugarin, noted that the Seychelles does not yet have clear regulation of the cryptocurrency market, so the regulator there is relatively loyal.
“But when [профильное законодательство] will appear, it is unclear how this will affect Russian users who migrated there,” he added.
Earlier, Binance representatives in a commentary to ForkLog reported that Russian citizens legally residing in other countries will be able to use the services and products of the exchange, subject to compliance with sanctions rules.
Will there be an outflow of funds from Binance?
Experts surveyed predict a “serious outflow of funds from the Russian segment.” According to Zuborev, uncertainty will make investors concerned about the safety of their funds.
“This churn will not be business critical, but it will definitely be noticeable. The P2P segment may suffer the most, as it will be forced to change its “registration” to other sites,” he explained.
At the same time, the analyst did not rule out that over time many users will return, “but not before it becomes clear that it is absolutely safe and will not create new risks.”
Andrey Tugarin recalled the general negative news background around Binance.
“Now any news around Binance triples in the direction of negative consequences for them due to the problems and lawsuits of the exchange with the US regulator. All this together does not create the most favorable background for the company, however, it is worth noting that some kind of alternative has nevertheless been proposed for Russian users,” the lawyer said.
Impact on the Russian market and quotes
On this issue, experts agreed that the departure of Binance will not particularly affect the Russian crypto market and “only a small part of users” will stop working with the platform.
They do not expect consequences for the quotes of major cryptocurrencies.
“This is fairly neutral news, it may not even affect the charts at all. Although there is a small potential impact, if users from the Russian Federation begin to close futures positions en masse, then this, in theory, could trigger a local trend,” suggested Nikita Zuborev.
The only ones who may be affected by this are Binance partners.
“The question is what will happen, for example, with Cryptorg [брокер, услугами которого пользуется Binance]whether he will be able to continue working on the Russian market,” said Sergei Mendeleev.
Binance itself believes that the decision to leave the Russian Federation will have a limited impact on its global business, since the company has been “gradually reducing its presence” in the country for a long time.
Let us remember that, against the backdrop of the first reports about the suspension of Binance’s activities in the Russian Federation, experts called such a scenario “unlikely”, since it is primarily unprofitable for the cryptocurrency exchange itself.
Among the main factors, they pointed out a noticeable decrease in activity on the platform after the departure of Russian users and the impact on the company’s reputation in other countries.
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