Binance is set to establish a global headquarters, in a reversal of its long-standing claim to be a decentralized company with no official HQ.
Speaking at Paris Blockchain Week, Binance CEO Richard Teng said that the crypto exchange is in talks with "a few jurisdictions" over the location of its corporate headquarters, adding that there are "a lot of considerations" behind the decision on where the world's largest crypto exchange should set down its corporate roots.
"Where is the value given our suite of products? What is the jurisdictions that has regulations that can cater to our suite of products, our suite of uses?" Teng said, adding that staffing processes and taxation agreements are among the "multitude of factors that you have to weigh and assess."
The location of Binance's headquarters has long been a vexed question. Under former CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, the exchange initially claimed that as a decentralized company, it had no headquarters, and that the very notion of offices and HQs were "old concepts."
"Is that an office where people sit? I worked from home for the last three and a half years," Zhao said in 2021. "Our leadership team are not sitting in one office," he added at the time, "we don't have a clear place where we can go by most people's normal definitions of a headquarters that we can call a headquarters."
As regulatory issues mounted, Zhao shifted gears, claiming that an answer to the question was coming "in due time."
After Zhao stepped down as CEO, under the terms of a $4 billion settlement with U.S. regulators, his replacement Richard Teng initially followed the same line, stating that it would reveal the location of its global headquarters "in due course."
At Paris Blockchain Week, Teng also addressed the plight of Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan, currently jailed in Nigeria and awaiting trial on money laundering charges.
“Our utmost priority is to do what we can to bring him home as soon as possible,” Teng said, reiterating that the company is working with Nigerian authorities to resolve the issue. Binance has previously claimed that Gambaryan has not violated any Nigerian law and that he has no decision-making power in the company.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.