What Is Binance? Volume, the US Case and Who Can Use It
Binance is a centralized cryptocurrency exchange that CoinGecko lists as established in 2017. In a CoinGecko snapshot of 27 Sep 2026 its 24-hour volume was 81,267 BTC, the largest of the 100 exchanges listed and 13.64% of their total. In Nov 2023 Binance and its CEO agreed to pay over $4.3 billion to US agencies.
Covered on this page, for traders outside the US: Blofin, WEEX and BYDFi.
CoinGecko describes Binance as one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume, and in 2023 it agreed to pay US agencies over $4.3 billion. This page covers what the public data says about its size, what the 2023 case found, and why an American signing up ends up at a different company.
How it works
A centralized exchange. Binance matches buyers and sellers on its own order books, holds customer assets while they sit on the platform, and sets its own listing, fee and eligibility rules. CoinGecko describes it as offering spot trading, futures and staking; it lists Binance as established in 2017 and gives its country as the Cayman Islands.
Most prices are quoted in stablecoins. A pair such as BTC/USDT prices bitcoin in Tether, a token designed to track the US dollar, rather than in dollars themselves. The stablecoins page covers how those tokens hold, or fail to hold, their peg.
The platform is more than one company. Binance Holdings Limited does business as Binance.com, per the Binance.US about page. Binance.US is the trade name of BAM Trading Services, a US company that, per its own terms of use (last updated 5 Jun 2026), shares common majority ownership with Binance Holdings but is a separate entity.
A worked example
The cost of a trade starts with the gap between the best bid and the best offer. On CoinGecko’s snapshot of 27 Sep 2026, the BTC/USDT pair on Binance showed a last price of 84,834.01 USDT and a bid-ask spread of 0.010012%.
- Buying $10,000 of bitcoin at the offer and selling it straight back at the bid costs the full spread once.
- $10,000 x 0.010012% = $1.00.
- The exchange’s trading fee is charged on top of that on each side, from Binance’s own fee schedule, and a larger order that eats through more than the best price pays more than the quoted spread.
On this pair the spread was small. The crypto exchange how-to covers the maker and taker fees that are charged on top of it.
The original data
CoinGecko’s exchange list, one snapshot downloaded on 27 Sep 2026 at 10:53 UTC. The figures below are that snapshot and are not updated here. Binance reported 81,267 BTC of trading volume over 24 hours, 13.64% of the 595,911 BTC reported by the 100 exchanges on the list’s first page, and 2.81 times the next largest, Pionex, at 28,872 BTC. It listed 490 coins across 1,364 pairs.
| exchange | 24-hour volume (BTC) | CoinGecko trust score |
|---|---|---|
| Binance | 81,267 | 10 |
| Pionex | 28,872 | 8 |
| Azbit | 22,867 | 6 |
| Tapbit | 19,549 | 6 |
| OKX | 19,441 | 10 |
| LBank | 19,419 | 8 |
| BitDelta | 18,549 | 6 |
| WEEX | 17,539 | 8 |
| KCEX | 16,560 | 6 |
| Bybit | 16,037 | 8 |
Trust scores and trading pairs
Trust scores change the picture. In the snapshot CoinGecko gave six exchanges on the list its top trust score of 10: Binance, Coinbase Exchange, Kraken, OKX, Gate and Bitget. Together they reported 141,699 BTC, and Binance’s share of that was 57.35%.
The busiest pairs are stablecoin pairs. CoinGecko’s data lists Binance’s 100 busiest pairs, which made up 86.12% of its reported volume. By dollar volume, 84.00% of those pairs were quoted in USDT and 9.01% in USDC; the single busiest was USDC/USDT, one stablecoin against another, at $1,171,338,834 in 24 hours. The full list is in the Binance pairs file, and every exchange’s volume is in the exchange volume file.
Binance and US users
The 2023 settlement. On 21 Nov 2023 the CFTC announced that Binance and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao, agreed to a proposed consent order: Binance to disgorge $1.35 billion and pay a $1.35 billion civil penalty, and Zhao to pay $150 million. The same day the Justice Department, FinCEN and OFAC announced their own actions, and the CFTC put the total across all four at over $4.3 billion. Binance Holdings pleaded guilty to criminal charges including operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, and Zhao pleaded guilty to a Bank Secrecy Act charge.
What the order found. Per the CFTC, the proposed order found that Binance offered and executed commodity derivatives transactions for US persons from July 2019, that it took steps to keep commercially valuable US customers, and that Zhao and Binance undermined the platform’s own controls meant to restrict US users.
Where Americans go instead. Binance.US says it launched in September 2019 to serve US residents, is registered with FinCEN, and, as of 2 Oct 2026, holds money transmitter licenses in 32 states. Its terms list Restricted States where it cannot operate, so residence inside the US matters too.
When it fails
Volume is self-reported. Exchange volume figures come from the exchanges, and CoinGecko’s trust score exists because they are not all equally reliable. Four of the ten largest by volume on this list scored 6.
The list is one page of one source. The 100 exchanges are the first page of CoinGecko’s list, which it orders by its own trust ranking, so the shares here are of those 100 and not of all crypto trading. Futures trading, which CoinGecko lists separately, is not in these figures.
A snapshot is one day. These figures cover the 24 hours to about 10:50 UTC on Sunday 27 Sep 2026. Reported volumes change from day to day, so the ranking and shares on another day can differ.
The exchange holds the assets. Coins left on any exchange are a claim on that company, which is the counterparty risk that a cold wallet avoids for long-term holdings.
Eligibility changes. Which countries and states a platform serves is set by its terms and its regulators, and both change. The dates above are the dates each page was read.
Related
Crypto covers how trading coins differs from trading stocks, and stablecoins explains the tokens most Binance pairs are priced in. Crypto futures covers the kind of derivatives the CFTC case was about, and how to use a crypto exchange walks through fees and custody on any venue.
Read the jurisdiction section of any exchange’s terms before sending money to it, and check which company you are actually signing up with. On Binance the answer depends on where you live.
— Michael Whitman
This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money. Some links on this page earn a commission if you buy through them. It costs you nothing and it does not decide what appears here or in what order — how these pages are made is set out in our methodology.