Binance Announces Its First IEO of 2020
- This time the exchange will sell native tokens for a recent acquisition – an Indian fiat gateway.
- The familiar ticket system will be used, and BNB balances are already being recorded.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao. CoinDesk
The most hyped up Initial Exchange Offering launchpad of 2019 – that of Binance, has announced its first offering of 2020.
Perhaps unexpectedly, it will be for the native token of an exchange – WazirX. The unlikely departure from the high performance blockchains and DeFi platforms that we are used to seeing on the launchpad has caught many by surprise. However, given Binance’s recent acquisition of the service, which marked its return to the Indian market amidst regulatory uncertainty, the move does make perfect sense.
WazirX’s purchase by the leading cryptocurrency exchange was announced on November 21 last year, at a time when WazirX’s 200,000 app downloads and top 10,000 most visited status in India (as per SimilarWeb) allowed Binance to make its way into one of the most strategically critical markets for cryptocurrency in the world. WazirX’s innovative p2p matching engine had already made it a popular fiat gateway in India, and Binance’s announcement clearly states that they are aiming to replicate the same model in different marketplaces: “After tremendous success in India, WazirX plans to solve the fiat <> cryptocurrency conversion problem globally for many more countries”.
As for the IEO, the familiar ticket system will still be in place. More specifically, 10,000 winning tickets, each granting the opportunity to purchase $200 worth of the new token (WRX), will be drawn. BNB balances will be recorded for 30 days – from January 4 to February 3 via hourly snapshots, and each individual user can only claim up to 10 tickets. The minimum required amount of BNB for a single ticket will be 50 (averaged over the 30-day period).
- Binance’s fiat banking partner, Skrill Limited, informed the exchange that it will no longer provide GBP on- and off-ramp to its customers starting 22 May.
- The owner of Skrill, Paysafe, said it decided to stop offering its embedded wallet solution to Binance due to the “challenging” regulatory environment in the U.K..
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- Stablecoin issuer Paxos has engaged the SEC in “constructive discussions” over its allegation that BUSD is a security, ready to defend its position in litigation.
- The company also revealed it will be ending its relationship with Binance, but noted that the decision was separate from the NYDFS and SEC investigations.
- Binance’s CSO said the company was working with regulators to figure out what remediations it has to go through to make amends for past compliance violations.
- The executive said he was “highly confident and feeling really good” about where the discussions were going, and expected to settle the charges with monetary penalties.