Binance's EU loophole draws regulator heat
ESMA and three national regulators probe Binance's reverse-solicitation workaround to MiCA licensing, even as it stays off the non-compliance list.
Regulators in France, Germany and Greece are examining how Binance keeps serving EU customers without a MiCA license, the Financial Times reported Thursday. The mechanism is reverse solicitation, an exemption meant for customers who approach a non-EU firm entirely on their own initiative.
Binance withdrew its Greek MiCA application in June. Some EU traders are now routed through its Abu Dhabi-regulated entity instead, according to the FT.
The numbers behind the exemption
ESMA's own register shows the scale of the enforcement gap it's trying to close.
- ESMA's non-compliant provider register grew from 164 entries on July 16 to 173 by Sept. 30, per Cointelegraph.
- Binance does not appear on that list despite the active scrutiny from three national regulators.
- MiCA's transitional period for non-EU firms ended July 1, 2026.
- ESMA Chair Verena Ross said Monday the regulator's focus has shifted "from rulemaking towards supervision and convergence."
What the gap reveals
The default read is that Binance is dodging EU rules through a technicality. The absence from the register points somewhere more useful: enforcement runs through national regulators, not ESMA itself, and that split is the exemption's real engine.
MiCA assigns licensing and enforcement to national competent authorities. ESMA collects their reports into a register it calls "non-exhaustive."
BaFin declined to comment, citing confidentiality law. France and Greece's watchdogs didn't respond to the FT by publication.
That silence is structural, not evasive. Each national regulator moves at its own pace, with its own evidentiary bar, before anything reaches ESMA's list.
Binance is exploiting exactly that lag. Reverse solicitation lets a firm argue the customer came to them, not the other way around, and that argument is hard to disprove at EU-wide scale with 27 separate enforcement tracks.
ESMA's consultation response this week asks the European Commission for stronger powers over non-EU firms using this exemption. That's an admission the current structure can't move fast enough to catch a firm the size of Binance before it adapts its routing again.
The Abu Dhabi entity shift is the tell. Binance isn't fighting to stay inside MiCA's perimeter; it's restructuring around it, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, as each door closes.
What would confirm the pattern
- Whether France, Germany or Greece open formal proceedings against Binance's reverse-solicitation use in the next quarter.
- Whether the European Commission grants ESMA direct enforcement power over non-EU CASPs in its MiCA review.
- Whether Binance appears on ESMA's non-compliant register before securing a MiCA license in any member state.