The withdrawal of the Binance crypto exchange from Russia had a significant impact on Russian users and led to changes in the market of cryptocurrency services related to the purchase, exchange and trading of digital assets. A few months after Binance announced its withdrawal from the Russian market, new players appeared, but so far none of them have been able to completely replace Binance.

Binance, a brief overview

Binance was the largest crypto exchange in the world, providing a variety of services, including trading in various cryptocurrencies, derivatives, a platform for P2P transactions, staking and other tools related to digital assets. In the autumn announcement of 2023, Binance announced the termination of accepting deposits in Russian rubles from November 15, 2023 and the sale of its Russian business, which was acquired by a new trading platform called CommEX.

The choice of users of P2P transactions

Binance's departure has primarily affected ordinary users, not just traders. Many Russians actively used the Binance P2P platform to make international money transfers. Cryptocurrency has become a popular medium for such transfers in 2022. Users in Russia have noticed that the cryptocurrency has no restrictions on the transfer amount and has a more favorable exchange rate close to the official exchange rate of the Central Bank of Russia, compared with banks and popular payment systems such as Zolotaya Korona, Kontakt or Unistream (the latter was sanctioned and suspended work on in many directions, including international transfers, in the summer of 2023).

Also, those who sent money to Russia began to actively use cryptocurrency. Problems with international transfers arose for those who lived abroad and received salaries in foreign currency, but regularly transferred money to relatives or paid for utilities in rubles. All of them were active users of the Binance P2P platform, but after restrictions from the exchange, they began to look for new services.

Most users of P2P platforms were ordinary people, not professional crypto traders. The amount of their transfers was small and related to daily expenses — usually several thousand dollars a month.

The following players of the cryptocurrency market have made attempts to take the vacant place in the P2P transactions market:

CommEX: Most regular users and even some traders have switched to CommEX, a new platform that acquired the Russian business from Binance. According to CommEX, in a short time after the launch, the volume of P2P trading reached 5 million rubles per day, and in November this volume increased to 23 million rubles. The most active transactions are carried out in RUB/USDT and RUB/BTC pairs. Russian users can buy and sell cryptocurrencies using bank cards and payment systems such as QIWI, Pyypl and Payeer. CommEX supports 75 fiat currencies and the most popular cryptocurrencies such as USDT, BTC, ETH, BNB and DAI.

Bybit: Russian traders who are actively engaged in trading cryptocurrencies have switched to Bybit, which provides a wide range of trading tools and its own P2P platform with support for the Russian ruble. Some traders switched to Bybit back in 2022, when Binance introduced restrictions on the size of deposits for spot and futures trading for Russian users.

Garantex (included in the US Treasury sanctions list) and Bitpapa: These platforms were popular among Russian users even before Binance left. Their popularity is associated with the support of the Russian ruble and, in the case of Garantex, the ability to exchange cryptocurrency for Russian rubles at one of the cash desks of crypto exchanges located in different cities of Russia. Bitpapa provides users in Russia with a wide range of payment methods for transactions with cryptocurrency — from transfers to cards of Russian banks to payment systems.