Crypto trader Binance ranked among the largest cryptocurrency exchangers in the world in 2024, with trading volume that was several times as high as Bybit or OKX. It should be noted that these figures are separate from platforms Binance.US, Binance TR or Binance.KR. The platform from the Cayman Islands faced investigations from the U.S. SEC, which came to a head in November 2023. Binance did not rank as the most used cryptocurrency exchanges used by consumers in the United States. Binance's settlement with the U.S. In November 2023, Binance agreed to pay a four billion U.S. dollar settlement with United States agencies — one of the biggest corporate fines in U.S. history. The U.S. Department of Justice investigated the platform for years for failure to prevent money laundering and growing crypto theft. The company's founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to the charges, agreeing to step down. Zhao would remain as the company's majority shareholder. The U.S. Treasury announced Binance will be subject to five years of monitoring and “significant compliance undertakings, including to ensure Binance’s complete exit from the United States.” Mixed signals from crypto companies The Binance settlement occurred in a month when overall crypto trading volume recorded its highest numbers for all of 2023. One of the main causes is the sudden popularity of FTT, a token released by FTX — the company founded by Sam Bankman-Fried. The developments surrounding Binance caused investors to move away from Binance's stablecoin BNB to the stablecoin from FTX. Earlier in November 2023, however, Coinbase saw its shares fall after announcing its quarterly performance figures.

As of November 2024, FameEX was the largest South Korean cryptocurrency exchange with a 24-hour trading volume of around 8.7 billion U.S. dollars. Upbit and OKX followed with around 7.6 billion and 5.3 billion dollars, respectively. The Korean cryptocurrency market has grown extensively over the past few years, then the market capitalization and transaction amount began to decrease in 2022.

The arrest of FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas in December 2022 - over charges of conspiracy and defrauding investors - made headlines worldwide. Less than a year before that, and before the crypto market suffered a two trillion-dollar crash, Bankman-Fried was the second richest crypto billionaire on the planet, with a fortune of 24 billion U.S. dollars.

Binance: clinging to top, bouncing between legal issues and coin drops
Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao was the richest crypto boss before and after the market crash - and was also the one who suffered the highest losses. The world's leading crypto exchange by trading volume, Binance is reportedly being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice over alleged money laundering violations. In December 2022, Binance temporarily halted withdrawals of Stablecoin USDC - a digital stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar. This came after the crypto exchange witnessed a flurry of withdrawals amounting to a total of 1.9 billion dollars in 24 hours, and as it tried to reassure investors about the security of their holdings.

The crypto crash: a domino effect fueled by global uncertainty
Digital currencies lost two trillion dollars in value following their peak of three billion in November 2021, due to a combination of growing interest rates and inflation which drove investors to pull back from deemed risky assets. Bitcoin saw its value fall by more than half since its late 2021 peak, which in turn caused the whole crypto market to collapse. The subsequent downfall of FTX also contributed to wreaking havoc on the market.