Binance is the biggest crypto exchange in the world by trading volume, and opening an account takes about ten minutes plus an ID check that Binance says is usually reviewed within 48 hours. Regular users pay 0.1% per spot trade, or 0.075% if they pay fees in BNB. The catch is where you live: US residents can't use Binance.com, new EU sign-ups have been closed since this summer, and some countries, Saudi Arabia among them, don't license any crypto platform at all. This guide walks through sign-up, fees, the security settings worth turning on, and the parts of Binance's record you should know about. If you're new to how fast prices move, read our report on Bitcoin falling below $80,000 first.
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| Coin | Price (USD) | 24h change |
|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin (BTC) | $79,683 | -0.5% |
| Ethereum (ETH) | $2,310.14 | -0.5% |
| BNB (BNB) | $735.57 | 0.0% |
| Tether (USDT) | $0.9987 | 0.0% |
Key points
- CoinGecko ranked Binance first of all exchanges by 24-hour volume on 27 October, at about 81,900 BTC, roughly five times OKX or Coinbase.
- Every new account has to pass identity checks before it can deposit or trade. Unverified accounts are limited to withdrawals.
- In 2023 Binance pleaded guilty in the US to anti-money-laundering and sanctions violations and agreed to pay about $4.3 billion.
Binance at a glance
| Item | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Launched | July 2017 | Binance About page |
| Registered users shown on site | 334,830,630 (27 Oct 2026) | Binance.com |
| 24h volume rank | Number 1, about 81,900 BTC | CoinGecko, 27 Oct 2026 |
| Spot fee, regular user | 0.100% maker / 0.100% taker | Binance fee schedule |
| Spot fee paid in BNB | 0.075% (25% off) | Binance fee schedule |
| Main regulator named by Binance | FSRA, Abu Dhabi Global Market | Binance About page |
| SAFU emergency fund | 15,000 BTC since 12 Feb 2026 | Binance via The Block |
| Not available to | US residents (Binance.US is separate); new EU registrations since July 2026 | Binance, Euronews, CoinDesk |
What Binance actually is
Binance is a centralised exchange. You send it money or crypto, it holds the assets in its own wallets, and you trade against other users on its order books. It started in July 2017 and grew fast enough that by 2023 the US Justice Department was calling Binance.com "the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange". That's still true on volume. When I pulled CoinGecko's exchange data on Tuesday morning, Binance had about 81,900 BTC of trading in the previous 24 hours. OKX, Coinbase and Kraken were each near 16,000 to 17,000.
The company now describes itself as regulated by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Abu Dhabi Global Market, and its site lists several ADGM entities. It also runs a long list of side products: a card, a Web3 wallet, launch programmes for new tokens and futures trading. Most beginners only ever touch four of them, and those are the ones I'll explain.
How to sign up for Binance, step by step
I followed Binance's own help pages for this, and the app flow is short.
- Open the Binance app or website and tap Sign up. You can register with an email address or phone number. Apple and Google sign-in work too.
- Enter the 6-digit code Binance sends you within 30 minutes, then set a password of at least 8 characters with one uppercase letter and one number.
- If you arrived through a referral link, the code fills in on its own and shows as Linked. Binance says a referral code can't be changed once it's attached, so check it before you continue.
- Go to Account, then Identification, then Get Verified. Pick your country of residence and the country that issued your ID. Then choose the document type and upload both sides.
- Do the face check in good light with no hat or glasses. Confirm your details carefully, because Binance says you can't edit them later.
Binance says reviews are usually done within 48 hours. Until then, the account can't deposit or trade. That rule exists because of the US case covered below: the Justice Department found that for years Binance let people trade with nothing more than an email address, and full KYC only became mandatory for trading in May 2022.
About the welcome reward on our link
When I opened our referral link on 27 October, the landing page showed a campaign called "Join my Qafila", with a shared pool of $500,000 in USDC and a line saying new users who finish verification and a first trade can unlock up to $20 in USDC. A countdown said the campaign had about 34 days left. The full rules sat behind a login, so I couldn't read them. Treat it as a welcome reward that depends on Binance's terms and your country. It also depends on whether the pool still has funds when you finish. In past mystery-box campaigns Binance paid out on a first-come basis. It also kept the right to change or cancel the offer.
Spot, P2P, Earn and Binance Pay
Spot trading is the plain version: you buy a coin with another coin or with a stablecoin like USDT, and you own it in your Binance account. If you're starting out, this is the only trading screen worth using for a while. Futures and margin let you borrow, and leveraged positions get liquidated fast when prices swing. Our 24 October market update shows how much the market can move in a day.
P2P is a marketplace where you buy crypto from another user and pay them in your local currency. Binance says it supports more than 800 payment methods. The seller's crypto sits in Binance escrow until the trade completes. Merchants who've passed extra checks carry a yellow badge. It's handy where banks are wary of crypto, but it's also where many scams happen. Fake payment screenshots are common. So are bank transfers that get frozen later, and buyers who ask you to "release" coins before the money arrives.
Simple Earn pays interest on coins you park there, with flexible products you can leave any time and locked ones for fixed terms. The rates are variable and change often, sometimes daily, so I'm not quoting any here. Our compound interest calculator is a quick way to see what a quoted rate really earns over a year.
Binance Pay lets you send crypto to another Binance user using their Binance ID or the email or phone tied to their account, without paying network gas fees. Binance says it covers more than 400 cryptocurrencies for transfers and has more than 48 million active Pay users. Both sides need verified accounts.
Check the Binance welcome reward
Binance fees explained
For a regular account, meaning less than $1 million traded in 30 days, spot fees are 0.1% for both makers and takers. If you hold BNB and switch on the option to pay fees with it, Binance takes 25% off, which brings it to 0.075%. On a $500 purchase that's 50 cents, or about 38 cents with BNB. VIP tiers lower the rate further, but VIP 1 starts at $1 million in monthly volume plus 5 BNB, so most readers won't get there. Use our percentage calculator if you want to check a fee on a different amount.
Three costs are easy to miss. Withdrawal fees are set per coin and per network and are shown before you confirm, so the same USDT withdrawal can cost more on one network than another. P2P sellers set their own prices, and the spread between their rate and the market is a fee in all but name. And the one-tap Buy Crypto and Convert screens quote their own price, so compare it with the spot order book before you confirm.
Security: the settings to turn on first
Plenty of account takeovers start with the owner's phone or email rather than the exchange itself. If your phone has been acting strangely, our guide to the signs your phone is hacked is worth five minutes before you add money anywhere.
Passkeys and 2FA
A passkey replaces the password with your phone's screen lock or a hardware security key. Password managers can store them too. Binance supports them on app version 2.60 or later with iOS 16 or Android 9 and up, and on the web in Chrome. You'll find it under Account Center, Security, Passkeys. Passkeys are tied to the real binance.com domain, so a copycat login page can't reuse them. Keep an authenticator app as a second factor and avoid relying on SMS codes, which a SIM-swap can intercept.
Withdrawal whitelist and anti-phishing code
With the whitelist switched on, crypto can only be withdrawn to addresses you've saved in advance, up to 200 of them. Binance can also hold newly added addresses for 24, 48 or 72 hours, which gives you time to react if someone gets in. The anti-phishing code is a 6 to 8 character code you choose. Once it's set, it appears in every genuine Binance email and SMS, so a message without it is a red flag.
SAFU and proof of reserves
SAFU, the Secure Asset Fund for Users, is an emergency reserve Binance set up in July 2018 with 10% of trading fees. In February 2026 Binance finished converting it into bitcoin and said it held 15,000 BTC, worth about $1 billion at the time. It also said it would top the fund back up to $1 billion if its value fell below $800 million. SAFU is a company promise rather than deposit insurance. Nobody outside Binance decides when it pays.
For anything you plan to hold for years, a wallet where only you control the keys removes the exchange from the picture. That's a trade-off, since losing your recovery phrase means losing the coins.
Where Binance is and isn't available
Check this before anything else. Binance has said since 2023 that US residents can't use Binance.com. Americans use Binance.US, a separate company with fewer coins that isn't offered in every state.
Europe changed this summer. Binance withdrew its application for a MiCA licence in Greece on 24 June 2026, stopped accepting new registrations in the EU and told customers in countries including France, Italy, Poland and Spain that services would be restricted from 1 July. It said existing users' assets stayed accessible. On 1 October Euronews reported that EU regulators were questioning how Binance still serves some European users. Binance says it's working toward MiCA authorisation. As of late October it wasn't listed on ESMA's register of authorised crypto firms.
In the Gulf, the picture splits. Binance's main licence is in Abu Dhabi. In Saudi Arabia, a committee led by the Capital Market Authority has warned that virtual currencies aren't regulated in the Kingdom and that no party is licensed to deal in them. That doesn't make every use illegal, but it means you'd have no local regulator to complain to. Tax treatment varies too; South Korea, for example, keeps delaying its crypto tax, as we covered in our South Korea crypto tax report. Read your own country's rules first.
The history you should know about
On 21 November 2023 Binance pleaded guilty in the US to anti-money-laundering, unlicensed money transmitting and sanctions violations and agreed to a penalty of about $4.3 billion, plus three years of an independent compliance monitor. Founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to failing to keep an effective anti-money-laundering programme, stepped down as CEO and served nearly four months in prison in 2024. President Trump pardoned him in October 2025. Richard Teng has run the company since late 2023, and Yi He became co-CEO in December 2025.
Binance now points to more than 1,500 compliance staff and its ADGM licences as proof it has changed. Whether that's enough is your call, but you should make it knowing the record.
Pros and cons
The strongest argument for Binance is liquidity. More buyers and sellers means tighter prices and less slippage on a big order, and its spot fee of 0.1% is low next to many app-based brokers. The coin list is long, P2P works in places where banks won't touch crypto, and the security tools above are genuinely good.
The case against is mostly about trust and access. Your coins sit with a company that has a criminal plea on its record, its regulatory status is unsettled in the EU and nonexistent in some countries, and P2P fraud is real. The product is also crowded. A beginner who opens the futures tab by accident can lose money very quickly.
Not financial advice. This article is for general information only. Crypto assets are highly volatile and can lose all their value. WorldScope does not recommend buying or selling any asset. Check the rules that apply in your country and consult a licensed adviser before investing.
Crypto is volatile and you can lose money.
How we checked this
I read Binance's own support pages for registration, identity verification, passkeys, the anti-phishing code and the withdrawal whitelist, plus its fee schedule, About page, Pay and Simple Earn pages, all on 27 October 2026. Volume and prices come from CoinGecko's public data pulled at 11:35 Riyadh time the same day. The legal history comes from the US Justice Department's 2023 press release and Reuters, and the EU and Saudi sections from Euronews, CoinDesk and the Capital Market Authority. I couldn't open the full referral campaign rules because they need a login, so that section describes only what the public landing page showed. WorldScope has an affiliate relationship with Binance through the links on this page; it didn't change what we wrote about the company's record.
FAQ
Is Binance safe to use?
It's the largest exchange and has strong account security tools, but it's still a company holding your assets, with a 2023 guilty plea in the US. Turn on a passkey and the withdrawal whitelist, and don't keep more on any exchange than you need for trading.
How long does Binance verification take?
Binance says reviews are usually finished within 48 hours. You can't deposit or trade until it's approved.
What are Binance's trading fees?
0.1% per spot trade for regular users, or 0.075% if you pay fees in BNB. Withdrawal fees depend on the coin and network.
Can I use Binance in the US or the EU?
Not Binance.com in the US; Americans use the separate Binance.US. In the EU, Binance stopped accepting new registrations ahead of the 1 July 2026 MiCA deadline and restricted services in several countries.
Can I add a referral code after signing up?
The code is linked during registration, and Binance says it can't be changed once linked. If you want a welcome reward, use the referral link before you create the account.
Affiliate link. Rewards depend on Binance's terms and your country.
Sources
- CoinGecko: Binance exchange volume and prices, 27 Oct 2026
- Binance: About page (launch date, ADGM regulation)
- Binance: Fee schedule
- Binance Support: How to register on the Binance app (updated 24 Nov 2025)
- Binance Support: Identity verification for a personal account (updated 5 Jun 2026)
- Binance Support: Anti-phishing code (updated 28 Aug 2026)
- Binance Support: Introduction to Binance P2P trading
- Binance Pay
- Binance Blog: Secure Asset Fund for Users valued at $1bn (2022)
- The Block: Binance finalizes $1 billion SAFU conversion into bitcoin (12 Feb 2026)
- US Department of Justice: Binance and CEO plead guilty (21 Nov 2023)
- Reuters: Trump pardons Binance founder Zhao (23 Oct 2025)
- Euronews: Binance to halt crypto services across EU countries (25 Jun 2026)
- CoinDesk: Binance tells EU users it will no longer provide services (26 Jun 2026)
- Euronews: EU watchdogs question Binance over unlicensed European operations (1 Oct 2026)
- Capital Market Authority (Saudi Arabia): Virtual currencies are not regulated in the Kingdom
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