Binance Withdraws Futures And Option From Germany, Italy, The Netherlands Amid Regulatory Crackdown

World's top cryptocurrency exchange Binance decided to stop offering its financial derivatives in Germany, Italy, and The Netherlands amid an ongoing regulatory crackdown.

What Happened: According to a Friday announcement, Binance will stop offering its futures and other financial derivatives on the respective markets with immediate effect.

Users from those countries now cannot access those products and will have 90 days to close their open positions from a later date to be announced in a future notice.

The announcement follows the exchange facing increasing pressure from the regulators of multiple countries.

Germany's financial regulator Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), previously warned the exchange over its now-retired tokenized stocks offering while also pointing out that the exchange cannot conduct any regulated activity in the country.

Read also: Crypto Exchanges Binance And FTX Reduce Max Leverage From 100x To 20x

About two weeks ago, Italy's financial regulator Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa (CONSOB), also warned that Binance is not authorized to conduct any regulated activity — such as offering financial derivatives — in the country. The exchange wrote in a now-deleted tweet that "the European region is a very important market for Binance, and it is taking proactive steps towards harmonizing crypto regulations."

This will inevitably result in a significant chunk of Binance's user base looking for alternatives, possibly decreasing the demand for Binance Coin BNB/USD over time as well. 

Price Action: According to Binance-owned price tracking service CoinMarketCap, Binance Coin seemingly suffered on the news. The coin fell by 5.25% from its mid-day high of $324.83 to a low of $307.01, before settling at $311.22 as of press time.