[Practical example:]

I am a Binance user in Italy, I received this email from Binance; it informs that by now taxes are automatically withheld on balances held on the exchange.

https://imgur.com/YmtW0Fj.png

Translation follows.


Dear Binance User,

Please read carefully the content of this communication ⤵️

Following the changes introduced by law 197/2022, the year-end balances of crypto assets are subject to taxation, whether they are held through non-custodial wallets (e.g. Ledger, Metamask, Trustwallet) or through exchanges like Binance. This is in line with what currently happens for traditional financial instruments.

Every Crypto Asset Service Provider active on the Italian territory has the obligation to pay the stamp duty: for this reason, you will find a limitation in the [Withdrawals section] equal to the amount of stamp duty to be paid (the rest is fully available for withdrawal).

✅ Binance Italy S.r.l., Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) registered with the OAM, is responsible for fulfilling its regulatory obligations with the highest standards.

As this is a new circumstance for us as well, we had to dedicate the necessary time to verify all the technical, fiscal and legal aspects.

🎁 This time was useful for us to decide how to give you a voucher on the trading fees to be used for future transactions on the Binance platform. This means that you will receive a voucher of the same value as the stamp duty paid, up to a maximum of 1,000 USDT.

Practical example:

Stamp duty paid: 10€

Voucher on the fees: 10 USDT approx.

For example, with trading fees of 0.1% on Binance, it is possible to trade crypto without paying fees up to 10,000 USDT of volume generated.

How do I pay the stamp duty?

On 31.12.2023 23:59 UTC, Binance, as required by law, calculated the stamp duty due for your account; in the [Withdrawals section], by clicking on deduct now, you will see a pop-up with the amount of stamp duty to be paid. If you have already paid the stamp duty in the previous days, we advise you to check again for any remaining amounts to be paid.

Your withdrawals are limited as you can only withdraw the amount exceeding the stamp duty to be paid.

To remove this limitation, you can press the "deduct" button in the [Withdrawals section] and pay the stamp duty in EURO immediately. If you do not have a sufficient balance in EURO, you can use the Convert section to convert your crypto into Euro (instant and zero fees), recharge your account in Euro through the services available here or deposit crypto from external wallets/exchanges for conversion.

In case you have not clicked and paid the tax by 19.02.2024 16:00 UTC, in the following days an automatic debit will be executed on your fiat and/or crypto balance present in your Binance account equal to the amount of stamp duty due.

In case the balance of your account is lower than the stamp duty due, you can convert your crypto into euro or recharge euro in your account and proceed as described in point 3 and 4.

As for the discount voucher on the trading fees, you will receive precise instructions by February 15, 2024.

In the following weeks, you will receive a statement attesting the balance of your account at 31.12.2023 and the relative stamp duty paid.

To sum up, what do I have to do?

Option A (recommended): Until 19.02.2024 16:00 UTC it is possible to proactively pay the stamp duty by pressing the "deduct now" button in the [Withdrawals section] and pay Binance the amount due in Euro as explained in point 3.

Option B: Wait for the automatic debit as described in point 4.

If the balance of your account is lower than the stamp duty:

Before the automatic debit, you can convert your crypto into Euro or recharge Euro as described in the Convert section or recharge your account in Euro through the services available here.

We thank you for your cooperation and we remain at your disposal for any clarification.

Binance Italy S.r.l.

I tried to deposit euros to Kraken via SEPA. Their new bank coordinates now identify a bank account in the United Kingdom, and the money transfer is considered "extra-SEPA". I remember that years ago Kraken accepted deposits into a bank in Germany, and the SEPA transfers were free. Now with their bank in the UK, my bank (ING) charges 30€ plus a 1.5% fee for currency conversion from EUR to GBP.

Is there a cheaper way to deposit?

To the best of my understanding, as of June 2023 Binance has terminated derivatives trading in the following EU / ex-EU countries:

• Cyprus
• France
• Germany
• Ireland
• Italy
• Netherlands
• Spain
• UK

This should be the complete list that reflects the current situation.

I received this email notification from Binance, it appears that privacy currencies are being terminated throughout Italy. Translated from Italian:

Dear Binancian,

We are sending you this email to formally inform you that, due to local regulatory requirements, Binance is unable to offer privacy coins that do not allow transaction monitoring in Italy. Starting from June 26, 2023, Binance users residing in Italy will no longer be able to purchase or trade the following privacy coins on our platform:

DCR, DASH, ZEC, ZEN, PIVX, NAV, SCRT, XVG, FIRO, BEAM, XMR, MOB

Please note the following timing for the above-mentioned privacy coins:

On 06-26-2023:

All spot trading operations and deposits related to the aforementioned privacy coins will be blocked. All open Spot orders will be automatically closed. Cryptocurrency withdrawals for privacy coins will remain available.
Conversion and Earn operations will be limited to decrease-only mode. Decrease-only mode allows you to sell or close positions, but limits buying and opening new positions for the aforementioned privacy coins.

On 09-26-2023: All Loan positions will be automatically closed.

On 09-29-2023: All Flexible EARN positions will be closed.

On 10-26-2023: Selling via Convert will be blocked. Cryptocurrency withdrawals for privacy coins remain available.

We continue to commit ourselves to the long-term development of our ecosystem and we will continue to invest in the development of the blockchain and digital asset industry. We take this opportunity to thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Team Binance

About two weeks ago Binance had a giveaway of free hoodies to users who submitted a general questionnaire explaining their opinion about different functionalities of the exchange. Considering that they recently gifted a $10 voucher to anyone completing KYC identification, which can be spent on trading fees, and the number of these beneficiaries had to be in the thousands at a minimum, and possibly higher, it doesn't seem a comparative larger burden to giveaway a few hundred hoodies.

[Closure of your derivatives positions by 21st February 2022]

Today Binance terminates all derivative trading for existing Italian users. Newly-registered users were already forbidden from derivatives since last summer.

The email I received follows.

Closure of your derivatives positions by 21st February 2022

Dear Binancian,

We previously announced that we will restrict derivatives offerings for existing users from Italy.
Effective immediately, you will have 30 days to reduce and close any existing positions you may have in the following products:

• Futures
• Options
• Margin (please refer to this FAQ on how to close margin positions)
• Leveraged Tokens

You will be able to top-up your margin balance to prevent margin calls and liquidations, but you will not be able to increase your positions or open new ones.
Please monitor any open positions you have and close them before [21st February 2022, 11:59 PM UTC]. Thereafter you will no longer be able to manually close the positions and Binance will close any remaining open positions.

Users Residing Outside Italy

The current restrictions in this notice apply to existing users from Italy. If you reside in a non-restricted region, please first submit your Proof-of-Address document to complete [Verified Plus] verification, and then contact our Customer Support Team to ensure you can continue to access our products. Acceptable documents include bank statements and utility bills. Our Verification FAQ can guide you on how to submit your documents.  

We aim to make this transition as straight-forward as possible. Should you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to our Customer Support Team for assistance.

Thank you,

Binance

The authorization to trade on fapi.binance.com/fapi/v1/ was spontaneously toggled off on my primary API key; the error message that flooded my logfile was:

Code:

Invalid API-key, IP, or permissions for action

As I 'm a verified user from Italy, where derivative trading was clarified to be illegal sometime in August, I thought this was the end for me. But after finding those errors in my logfile, I searched for news regarding the introduction of additional restrictions on Binance concerning legal compliance. I couldn't find any. Then I toggled the authorization back on and the API resumed working.

Hopefully this wasn't some preliminary test.

Huobi's futures and perpetual swaps seem to only allow entering limit orders with no option for market orders.

From the documentation page Trading Rules of Perpetual Swaps only these type of orders are listed:

• Limit order
• Trigger order
• BBO (Best Bid Offer) order
• Optimal Top N BBO Price Order
• Flash close

Which inordinately belong all to the limit class of order. The documentation doesn't afford to list market orders. This shortcoming seems to be confirmed by the trading panel itself: screenshot. Incidentally the order book consistently maintains an abnormal concentration of volume close to the spread, suggesting the intention to execute these limit orders ASAP.

The lack of market orders also inherently suggests heavy participation of Huobi in an internal dealing desk.

Screenshot of my Binance Visa card wallet: [removed]

I deposited some USDT into my Card wallet (I have the physical plastic card) but the balance is grayed out. Apparently it cannot be spent, nor transferred back to my spot wallet.

Depositing and spending EURO instead works fine.

On this page Binance offers an OTC service called "convert" which can be more convenient that dropping a market order on the spot.

The historical list of such transactions is reported here.

Can this list be retrieved via an API?

Suppose BTC/USDT currently trades at a price of 10,000 USDT on the perpetual futures.

I attempt to trade this way:

• First I register a stop-market short order with a trigger at 9,000 USDT.
• Then I want to register a stop loss order (stop-market long) at 10,100 USDT with the reduce-only option enabled, for closing the former position, once opened, in case of price reversal.

Binance accepts and registers this stop loss order, but only if the price is above 10,100 USDT at the time the order is registered, and rejects it otherwise. But even in the first case, despite the order is accepted, its trigger condition is automatically and incorrectly set as "execute if price <= 10,100" rather than the expected "execute if price >= 10,100" making it apparently impossible to attach a stop loss to a stop-market order.

[This coverage resulted in an approximate loss of $10 billion across dozens of cryptocurrencies within one hour.]

Tether's ToS were revised in February 2019 (see appeal to NYAG, page 16 of pdf) to allow its reserves to include credits alongside with US dollars. Before this revision, all issued tethers were contractually covered in full by USD deposits at any given time, and these deposits could not contractually be spent by the company. The ToS included a clause to allow the company to not redeem the tokens, temporarily or permanently, at its discretion.

I seem to conclude that the business model was a planned exit scam.

As of April, Tether's USD reserves cover 68% of all issued tokens. (page 78 of pdf) From page 79, distrust in Tether is claimed to provoke distrust in all crypto currencies:

The Attorney General’s ex parte, highly inflammatory, and misleading application was widely covered in the press, including an article in the Wall Street Journal. See Paul Vigna, Bitfinex Used Tether Reserves to Mask Missing $850 Million, Probe Says, Wall Street Journal (April 25, 2019) (copy attached as Ex. H). This coverage resulted in an approximate loss of $10 billion across dozens of cryptocurrencies within one hour. See Ryan Browne & Eustance Huang, Cryptocurrencies shed $10 billion in an hour on worries over ‘stablecoin’