In brief
- Binance.US CEO Catherine Coley joined the latest episode of the Decrypt Daily podcast.
- The platform recently received a license in North Carolina—the 41st US state where it has become available.
- Binance.US is also working on a "facelift" for its trading app.
On November 12, North Carolina became the 41st US state to grant an operational license to Binance.US, the American arm of global cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Catherine Coley, the platform’s CEO, explains some of the intricacies of dealing with US regulation and expanding across the country.
“We finally launched in the state where my family's originally from and where I spent four years of college and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill,” Coley told the Decrypt Daily yesterday.
She noted that recently the platform also launched in Georgia, Alabama and Florida. While Binance.US applied for licenses in every US state, the process of approval is not fast since every state has its own set of regulatory requirements.
“So it's really the state regulators at each level. And each state by state has a different system, they kind of have a different application process, we similarly go through them,” Coley explained, adding “You've heard of the name like [the New York State Department of Financial Services] and the BitLicense. So those are some of the groups that are helping us along the way get licensed in each state, which we're really excited about, but does take time.”
Coley also noted that while Binance.US’s app was launched in January this year, the company is currently giving it a “facelift” to make the application more streamlined.
“So we've launched a beta of our new app, it's going to be coming out [as] what we called ‘app 2.0,’ said Coley, stressing that, “It's gonna be sleeker and a little bit more streamlined. So before our app was a little bit busy, and you had to kind of figure out what you wanted to do. Even though the buy and sell crypto buttons were on the homepage, not a lot of people saw them.”
Another new feature on Binance.US—aimed at the exchange’s institutional client—is the support for the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN), a payments platform operated by California-based Silvergate Bank.
“We just also opened up SEN, so that's the Silvergate Exchange Network. And that's really catered to our institutional clients that are looking to move dollars in and out of exchanges pretty quickly,” Coley explained.
She added that the service offers institutional clients “24/7 free, instant transfers for dollars” on the Silvergate Exchange Network and helped Binance.US to boost its liquidity.