Why did Binance hire a former US senator as a policy advisor?

On March 11, cryptocurrency trading platform Binance announced the hiring of former U.S. Senator and Ambassador to China Maxwell Baucus as a policy advisor and government liaison.

Baucus served as former US President Barack Obama's ambassador to China from 2014 to 2017, and before that he served in the US House of Representatives for nearly 40 years. He is also a longtime friend of current US President Joe Biden.

It is not difficult to guess that this move by Binance is an important step in Binance's development in the US market, further alleviating Binance's regulatory risks in this region with the strictest cryptocurrency regulation in the world.

Binance’s growth in the United States

Binance.Us is established

On September 18, 2019, Binance.Us opened user registration and officially announced the establishment of Binance.Us. Two months after its launch, the 24-hour trading volume has reached 14 million US dollars.

This is the first step for Binance to officially start operations in the United States.

In the development of cryptocurrency, the United States ranks first in the world in terms of regulatory strictness. Previously, many cryptocurrency-related institutions have been sued in the United States for regulation: In October 2020, BitMEX, once the world's largest cryptocurrency futures platform, was jointly sued by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Bitfinex and Tether were also sued by the New York State Attorney General's Office.

Binance chose to set up a separate US branch and operate in compliance with regulations.

The main site directs traffic to Binance.Us

In November 2020, in order to make compliance work more perfect, the Binance main site began to divert traffic to the Binance US platform.

Binance has issued a warning to users in the United States, blocking local users from accessing the Binance main site and requiring users to transfer their assets out of the main site within 90 days.

This is also seen by the outside world as a further measure for Binance to respond to regulation.

Hiring former U.S. senator as policy advisor

Binance hired Maxwell Baucus, former U.S. Senator and Ambassador to China, as a policy advisor and government liaison, which will be a very important step for Binance to deepen its presence in the U.S. market. Binance's future landing in the U.S. will be smoother.

For Binance, the most important identity of Maxwell Baucus is that he once served as the chairman of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee and the Joint Committee on Taxation. Compared with the new U.S. Treasury Secretary Yellen and others, Baucus is more interested in blockchain payments, and he once said in 2017 that China's standard payment system is surpassing the United States, and the United States does not seem to be ready to introduce legislation to expand financial technology supervision.

As the region with the highest financial risks in the world, the United States, with the joining of Baucus, who has served as a US Senator for 35 years, Binance's risks in global regulation are being reduced.