Signature Bank will not handle transactions of less than US$100,000 for crypto exchange customers starting in February, according to a statement from the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
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Fast facts
- Binance said in an email to Forkast that the new policy will be implemented for all of Signature’s crypto exchange clients.
- “As a result, some individual users may not be able to use Swift bank transfers to buy or sell crypto with/for USD for amounts less than US$100,000,” said Binance. Financial services firms use Swift to send and receive money transfers and other financial information securely and quickly.
- According to Binance, 0.01% of its average monthly users were serviced by Signature Bank, and it is actively working to find an alternative solution.
- Binance users can continue buying and selling crypto using credit or debit cards, using one of the other fiat currencies supported by Binance.Its peer-to-peer marketplace will continue to operate as usual.
- Signature’s move follows a trend of traditional financial services firms scaling back their involvement in crypto in the wake of crypto exchange FTX’s collapse. According to Signature, the bank had a deposit relationship with FTX.
- Signature Bank’s CEO Eric Howell said the bank would shrink its crypto-related deposits by as much as US$10 billion, in a December conference hosted by Goldman Sachs.
- In its end-year results, Signature Bank’s digital asset banking deposits declined US$12.39 billion over twelve months, and lost about US$690 million in the first two weeks of 2023.
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