Binance to cease offering options and leveraged tokens in South Africa
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance today announces changes to its offering in South Africa. The company will cease offering the following products to South African users:
- Futures
- Options
- Margin
- Leveraged Tokens
With immediate effect, South African users will be restricted from opening new accounts for these products. Users will have 90 days to reduce and close their positions for these products. Users will be able to top-up margin balances to prevent margin calls and liquidations, but they will not be able to increase or open new positions.
Users will no longer be able to manually reduce or close their positions after 6th January 2022 11:59 PM (UTC). Thereafter all remaining open positions will be closed.
Let’s recall that, in September, Binance announced that its clients in Singapore will not be able to access certain functions on Binance.com including fiat deposit services, spot trading of cryptocurrencies, the purchase of cryptocurrencies through fiat channels and liquid swap.
The changes to Binance’s offerings in Singapore were announced about a week after the company said it will cease offering futures, options, and leveraged tokens to existing Australian users.
The restrictions are implemented as Binance experiences a wave of regulatory actions against it. In July, for instance, Malaysia’s Securities Commission announced enforcement actions against Binance for illegally operating a Digital Asset Exchange. Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has also cautioned against the cryptocurrency firm.