Binance.US, the American affiliate that shares a name with the world’s largest crypto exchange, has joined the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN), a 24/7 instant settlement network used by some of the largest trading entities in the space.
SEN, which replaces clunky wire transactions by allowing corporates to instantly move U.S. dollars between crypto exchanges including on nights and weekends, saw its volume increase $7.8 billion to $17.4 billion in the first quarter, according to a recent Silvergate Bank earnings call.
Existing members of Silvergate’s SEN payment network include Gemini, Kraken and ErisX.
“We’ve launched SEN for our corporate clients so now they’re able to move dollars through Silvergate around the clock instantaneously,” Binance.US CEO Catherine Coley said in an interview. “It’s a huge advantage for clients that are trying to get funds into Binance.US to be able to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, and we’re excited to see the impact on the rest of our liquidity.”
Coley said all the API integrations with SEN had gone smoothly, having conducted testing with around a dozen or so clients. “We’ve seen about five times the growth of their current trading behaviors on the platform by just the testing of SEN,” she said.
Binance.US has been working hard, jumping through various regulatory hoops to reach this point. The company had also been working with Nevada-based Prime Trust, which remains a dollar custody solution for retail customers of Binance.US, Coley said.
“We are thrilled to welcome Binance.US to our rapidly growing Silvergate Exchange Network,” Alan Lane, Silvergate CEO, said in a statement. “We are confident the SEN will accelerate their vision and bring value to their business.”
Binance.US’s relationship with Binance, the octopus-like crypto conglomerate of global partnerships and affiliations, has been the subject of some scrutiny. In a recent Forbes article, the U.S. division was alleged to be little more than a kind of regulatory decoy.
“Binance.US has from day one operated as a regulated entity and we’re fully compliant both at a federal and a state level,” said Coley. “We focus heavily on our BSA [Bank Secrecy Act] and AML [anti-money laundering] program.”
A great part of being in SEN, said Coley, is that it opens up Binance.US to a number of businesses that had been blocked from using the exchange until now.
“Now we have SEN, this is unlocking a lot of access for folks that have been wanting to work with but haven't been able to because we were not kind of operating in their style,” she said.