Binance is in discussions with Malaysian regulators to obtain a licence to operate in the country again, more than five years after it was ordered to cease its operations here. The cryptocurrency exchange confirmed that it has been engaging the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) and Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) over the possibility of establishing a licensed business in the country.
Speaking to Bloomberg, a Binance spokesperson said that the company has been jointly engaging both regulators over the past 10 months to explore a licensed pathway for offering its products and services to Malaysians. However, they declined to disclose the specific type of licence it is seeking, saying that discussions are still centred around the viability and structure of a licensed business model.
For context, the SC ordered Binance to cease operating in Malaysia in July 2021 after finding that the exchange was illegally operating a digital asset exchange in the country. The order also required it to stop all media and marketing activities, while restricting Malaysian investors from accessing its Telegram group. Although the regulator removed Binance from its Investor Alert List in 2024, it added the exchange back to the list earlier this month without providing an explanation, the report adds.
Binance Faces Questions Over P2P Platform
The renewed discussions come amid scrutiny over Binance’s peer-to-peer (P2P) trading platform. In September, former finance minister and DAP chairman Lim Guan Eng wrote to the SC asking it to investigate whether the platform was facilitating ringgit transactions through advertisements listed under other currency denominations. His office subsequently distributed the letter on 31 October 2026, citing Binance’s recently disclosed security breach.
To recap, Binance recently reported a major security incident that could have affected approximately US$6.3 billion (~RM25.6 billion) worth of digital assets. Despite this, the exchange said it had found no evidence of wallet private key leaks, while maintaining that user funds remain safe. It also pledged to cover all losses through its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and corporate reserves, with approximately US$3 billion (~RM12.2 billion) worth of affected assets reportedly frozen through cooperation with blockchain partners.
In response to Lim’s letter, Binance said that it had voluntarily disabled a specific Papua New Guinea kina marketplace on its P2P platform, which was unofficially pegged to the ringgit, as part of its engagement with the SC. The exchange also addressed a separate complaint involving an advertisement by a non-Malaysian user on its Romanian leu marketplace.
It maintained that the latter was an isolated incident and that no other products on its platform were pegged to or served as substitutes for the ringgit. Binance acknowledged that no platform could completely prevent bad actors from circumventing marketplace rules, but rejected the suggestion that the incident reflected any sustained effort to circumvent Malaysian law.
(Source: Bloomberg)
