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If you live in the EU and still have coins on Binance, nothing is frozen, but nothing new is possible either. Since 1 July 2026 Binance can't take sign-ups, deposits, spot orders or Earn subscriptions from EU residents, because it never obtained a licence under MiCA, the EU's crypto rulebook. Withdrawals remain open. That makes this a calm job rather than an emergency, as long as you do the transfer carefully. Here is what happened, which platforms are licensed, and the exact routine we'd follow to move funds.
What actually happened on 1 July 2026
MiCA gave existing exchanges a transition period to get authorised in at least one EU country, after which they can serve the whole bloc. Binance's route ran through Greece. On 24 June 2026 it withdrew that application, and when the transition period ended on 1 July it had no licence anywhere in the EU. In France, Italy, Spain, Poland and the other member states, Binance users lost spot, margin and futures trading, new deposits and Earn. Yahoo Finance reported that about 2 million users in France alone were affected.
Binance says customer funds are safe and that it intends to come back once licensed. Both may be true. But a platform that cannot legally serve you is not one to keep a balance on in the meantime, and it is why we removed every Binance link from this site.
Sources: Yahoo Finance, Binance halts crypto trading in France · Reuters, 16 June 2026
MiCA-licensed exchanges we have scored
A MiCA licence is the minimum, not a recommendation. It tells you the platform is allowed to serve you and is supervised; it doesn't tell you how it handled its last hack or how well it backs customer balances. That's what our score is for. Two of the licensed platforms below carry a US guilty plea, and one suffered the largest exchange theft on record — read the reviews before you choose.
| Exchange | EU entity and regulator | Our score | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| OKX | OKX Europe, Malta (MFSA), Jan 2025 | 8.4 / 10 | Lowest fees we track; 2025 US guilty plea |
| Bybit EU | Bybit EU GmbH, Austria (FMA), May 2025 | 8.4 / 10 | Separate bybit.eu platform; $1.5B hack in 2025, users repaid |
| Coinbase | Coinbase Europe, Luxembourg (CSSF), 2025 | 8.1 / 10 | Listed company, audited accounts; highest fees |
| Kraken | Kraken (Payward), Ireland (Central Bank), 2025 | 8.0 / 10 | No customer-fund hack since 2011 |
| KuCoin EU | KuCoin EU Exchange GmbH, Austria (FMA), Nov 2025 | 7.1 / 10 | 2025 US guilty plea; Malta excluded |
Sources: ESMA, MiCA interim register · casptracker.eu (registry tracker)
Before you move anything
Open the new account first and finish identity checks there, before you touch Binance. KYC can take a day or two, and you don't want coins sitting in limbo while it does. Then decide where each coin is going. Coins you trade go to the new exchange. Coins you hold for years arguably shouldn't go to any exchange at all: this is a good moment to move them to a hardware wallet instead, and do the switch once rather than twice.
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The transfer routine we use
Withdrawals are where people lose money, almost never because of the exchange and almost always because of one wrong field. Go slowly:
- Copy the deposit address from the receiving platform every single time. Never from your transaction history, never from a message.
- Check the whole address, not just the first and last four characters. Address-poisoning scams send you a dust transaction from a lookalike address so it shows up in your history.
- Pick the same network on both sides (for USDT, for example, the network names must match exactly). A wrong network can mean coins you can't recover.
- Send a small test amount first, wait for it to arrive, then send the rest.
- Expect a question about ownership: under the EU's Transfer of Funds Regulation, platforms can ask you to prove you control a self-hosted wallet for transfers over €1,000. Answer it, it isn't a scam signal.
- Screenshot each withdrawal and deposit with its transaction ID. You'll want them for tax.
What about tax?
In most EU countries, moving coins between accounts you own is not a sale, so it isn't taxed by itself. Selling, swapping one coin for another or cashing out may be, depending on where you live, and some countries treat crypto-to-crypto swaps differently from sales to euros. Keep the records from the step above, and if your history on Binance is long, export it now while the account still lets you: a CSV of trades, deposits and withdrawals for every year you used it. Since January 2026, EU platforms also report your transactions to tax authorities under DAC8, so gaps in your own records will show.
Our honest take
If you were on Binance for the low fees, OKX matches them and is licensed in Malta, though its US guilty plea weighs on our regulation score. If you want the cleanest security record, Kraken has had no customer-fund hack since 2011 and is licensed in Ireland, at higher fees. If you mostly bought and held, the best alternative to Binance may be no exchange at all: a hardware wallet you control. None of this is financial advice, and checking that a platform serves your specific country before you deposit is on you.
Next step
Moving from Binance? Compare the licensed options side by side
Our ranking scores every exchange above on the same public rubric. Kraken and OKX are the two licensed platforms we link to; neither link is shown to UK visitors.
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