A regulator draws a line in time. Whoever stands on the right side of that line gets a year’s reprieve. Whoever stands on the wrong side has to apply for a licence at once. Binance stood on the wrong side. In a chat on 11 March 2020, someone proposed moving the line instead — by making a contract look three months older than it was.
10 January 2020
In early 2020 the British regulator, the FCA, was handed new powers. From that moment crypto firms fell under the rules against money laundering and terrorist financing, and had to register.
There was one exception. Firms already carrying out crypto activities in the United Kingdom before 10 January 2020 could carry on without registering — until 10 January 2021. A year of air.
A date like that is not a detail. It is the difference between twelve months of undisturbed growth in one of the largest financial markets in the world, and opening your books straight away to a regulator that had just been given new teeth.
Binance had its own company in the United Kingdom. Only: on 10 January 2020 it was not really in business yet.
“I am fine with it”
On 11 March 2020 a Binance strategy officer made a proposal in an internal chat that the leadership was reading along in.
A service agreement between the British company and the holding company in the Cayman Islands would be backdated by three months. On paper that would show the British arm had already been in business before 10 January 2020.
She wrote down the reason as well, and it left nothing to the imagination: Binance had to convince the FCA that the British entity had started before 10 January 2020. Firms with existing crypto activities could then carry on without registering until 10 January 2021.
Another senior manager in the same chat saw the danger. The manoeuvre could become a source of suspicion, he wrote.
Changpeng Zhao, founder and owner, kept it shorter. “I am fine with it.” That was the whole answer.
He signed the document afterwards.
“I am fine with it.”Changpeng Zhao, 11 March 2020, under a proposal to backdate a contract by three months — reported by Reuters, which saw the signed document.
The trail that was not meant to exist
It was not the only moment when the British arm turned into a problem.
Earlier that year a London payment provider asked for something utterly ordinary: state on your website which company is responsible for payments in ordinary money. The provider itself called that a completely standard request in the payments world.
Inside Binance it was seen as a risk. An employee warned that a sentence like that would leave a paper trail between the British company and the main exchange — and it was precisely the main exchange whose location the firm did not want to disclose.
The strategy officer saw a way out. The sentence could go up without making the relationship public. That would not clash with what she called the unregulated policy. And once it was no longer needed, Binance could “secretly delete” the sentence later.
Then she wrote the line that sums the whole thing up: there is “a lot of room to play with compliance”.
Zhao answered: looks good, go ahead. In the weeks that followed the sentence appeared on the site. And then it disappeared again.
“A lot of room to play with compliance.”A Binance strategy officer, early 2020, in a chat the founder was reading along in — reported by Reuters.
What the FCA itself made of it
The grace period ran out anyway. And when it came to the crunch, it went wrong.
In June 2021 the FCA warned the British public that Binance held no licence at all to offer regulated services in the United Kingdom. The regulator imposed restrictions on the British arm.
The reason the FCA gave alongside it is harder than the measure itself. It concluded that the Binance company in question was not capable of being effectively supervised, because the firm refused to hand over information about its activities and about the legal entity behind the main exchange.
That is a regulator saying: we do not know who we are dealing with, and that is because they will not tell us.
Exactly that same pattern — refusing to say where the company sits — runs through the entire history of Binance. It is the subject of part 5 of our series.
What is established, and what is not
The chat messages in this story come from the Reuters investigation of 17 October 2022, which reviewed thousands of internal messages, emails and documents and spoke to some thirty former employees, advisers and business partners. Reuters says it saw the signed, backdated document itself.
Established and public: the FCA deadline of 10 January 2020 and the exception for existing firms. The FCA warning of June 2021 and its judgement that the British company was not capable of being effectively supervised.
Journalistic reconstruction: the chat messages, the proposal to backdate and Zhao’s four words. Binance did not respond substantively to the questions from Reuters at the time; the FCA declined to comment on this episode. There is no court ruling on this specific point.
So we write it down for what it is: detailed reporting by a respected news agency, not a fact established in court. That does not make it any less serious. It does matter how you write it down.
Why this is more than an administrative trick
You can read this as paperwork. A date on a contract, three months’ difference, what is the problem.
The problem is what those three months stood for. The rules Binance was trying to slip out from under were no formality but British anti-money-laundering law — precisely the subject on which the company would plead guilty in the United States three years later and pay $4.3 billion.
And the pattern is always the same. Not: we do not follow the rules. But: we make sure the rules just barely do not apply to us. An entity that becomes the target instead of you. An address you do not name. A sentence you secretly delete again. A date that moves three months.
That is not one employee getting carried away on one day. It is a way of working, and the same signature was under it every time.
And now?
The United Kingdom never let Binance in after all. The restrictions from 2021 stayed in place and to this day the company has no licence of its own there.
In Europe it did not end any better. Binance never got a MiCA licence over the line and withdrew its Greek application on 24 June 2026; from 1 July 2026 the company was no longer allowed to offer its services in the European Economic Area.
Anyone choosing an exchange today does not need to know this story. But the question underneath it is the right one: which register are you on, and who can be held to account when things go wrong. That is exactly what a licence is. And it is exactly what was pushed aside for three months here.
Sources
The internal messages, the proposal to backdate and the response from Changpeng Zhao come from the investigation by Tom Wilson and Angus Berwick for Reuters (17 October 2022), based on thousands of internal messages, emails and documents from 2017 to early 2022 and conversations with around thirty former employees, advisers and business partners. Reuters reports that it saw the signed document itself. Binance did not respond substantively to the questions; the FCA declined to comment on this episode. The rule change of 10 January 2020 and the exception for existing firms are public policy of the FCA, as is the consumer warning of June 2021. For the American settlement of $4.3 billion: the press release from the US Department of Justice of 21 November 2023. Where this piece presents journalistic reconstruction rather than an established fact, it says so explicitly. Last checked 1 August 2026.