Following Binance’s withdrawal from the country, its Russian customers are switching to other platforms for cryptocurrency trading.
It is becoming clear that many customers don’t appreciate CommEX, the company that bought Binance’s Russian operation. According to Satoshkin CEO Dmitry Stepanin, peer-to-peer (P2P) operations have currently decreased by between 10 and 30%.
According to data from P2P.Army, Binance had about 7,700 daily ruble P2P transaction advertising at the beginning of 2023. This decreased to 6,300 by the middle of the year, and to 3,400 by the end of September.
On Binance, there was no information accessible for transactions in rubles as of October 3. Due in large part to its aggressive marketing initiatives, many cryptocurrency traders have switched to Bybit, but activity has also surged on other exchanges like Binance, including as Huobi, Bitget, Kucoin, and Gate.io.
Huobi’s ad count increased from 3,900 to 4,000 in the first part of the year to 4,300 in September and 4,500 in October, according to data from P2P.Army.
In October, Bybit’s ad count—which was 1,800 in the first half of the year—surpassed 2,700. A million new users are expected to join CommEX, however this number may be optimistic given that Binance had about 700,000 Russian users who had joined.
Furthermore, a lot of people from Russia and Ukraine seem to be using Hong Kong as a safe haven for their cryptocurrency assets. Crypto has grown to be a substantial component of the financial portfolios for high-net-worth individuals, according to Merton Lam, the founder of CryptoHK, one of the biggest crypto OTCs in Hong Kong.