YEREVAN (CoinChapter.com) – The world’s largest crypto exchange Binance has been in partnership with the Belize-based Advanced Cash Limited (ADVcash) for years, a company operated mainly from Russia.
Given the sanctions against the country, a question remains whether Russia is still ‘feeding’ Binance.
Meanwhile, the whole situation needs much clarification, starting with the origins of ADVcash and its relationship with crypto exchanges worldwide.
What is ADVcash, and Why is It significant for Crypto?
It is no secret that before mainstream attention focused on the new ‘digital asset’ phenomena, crypto exchanges had trouble maintaining large deposits at ‘legitimate’ banks, proving too erratic for fiat institutions.
Instead, crypto exchanges opted for shadow banks to handle their deposits, which backfired on more than one occasion.
For example, as reported by news outlet DirtyBubbleMedia, Signature Bank was providing services to Binance through a shell corporation. After the story blew up, however, Signature limited Binance’s transfers to >$100,000, essentially cutting the exchange off of dollars from retail customers.
The largest crypto exchange with billions of dollars worth of daily trading volume partnered with ADVcash to maintain their deposits. Moreover, an investigation by Mike Burgersburg, the author of the mentioned substack publication, revealed that ADVcash is Belize-based only nominally. In reality, the company is operated mainly from Russia.
Due to these challenges, many crypto exchanges have continued to partner with questionable offshore payment processing entities to do business. We believe we have discovered one of the major firms providing these services today: Advanced Cash Limited (Advcash).
mentioned the author.
Also read: Russia threatens severe retaliation, including Global Catastrophe & Nuclear War, if the West arms Ukraine.
Additionally, Binance is not the only exchange dependent on ADVcash. The list includes Huobi, OKCoin, and the crypto lending firm Nexo. Meanwhile, wider implications aside, affiliation with Binance alone could throw shade on the company. Burgensburg explained why; let’s put a pin in that:
[ADVcash] founder-and-CEO [ Miami-based Yaacov Bitton ] is tied to at least one failed cryptocurrency scheme. And it turns out that another major crypto payments firm shares links to both Advcash and to the same crypto scam. [Native Video Box initial coin offering (ICO) in 2018.]
read the report.
Binance and Advcash are ‘more than friends.’
While investigating Binance’s links to the real economy, DirtyBubbleMedia discovered Advcash was one of the primary means listed by the exchange for transferring both USD and other currencies onto the platform.
The report also stated that Advcash “touts a special partnership with Binance” on its website. The company stated that Advcash customers could link their Binance accounts directly and take advantage of fee-free transfers to the exchange. Binance, in return, has an entire page on its website dedicated to instructions on how to use Advcash to send and receive fiat currency from the exchange.
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Meanwhile, Advcash also advertises other “interesting” services. For example, they offer a service to provide customers with International Banking Account Numbers (IBAN).
IBAN ensures that there are “no more SEPA payments to/from exchanges that your bank doesn’t like.” In other words, ADVcash is offering to assist its customers in hiding financial activity from their banks. Seems… questionable.
said Burgersburg.
Is Binance bypassing sanctions?
The dirty BubbleMedia report specifically noted that there’s NOT ENOUGH EVIDENCE to support the claim that Binance knowingly bypassed international sanctions against Russia. First, however, let’s get back to the pin that was put in the mention of ADVcash CEO’s involvement in a fraudulent ICO.
The company in question was Native Video Box. The latter positioned itself as the “next-generation decentralized video distribution platform.”
The project reportedly raised over $6 million from investors. However, it was a painfully familiar rug pull scheme. The founders vanished with the money without delivering on their promise.
While learning about ADVcash, we discovered another Russian crypto payments service tied to Advcash called Mercuryo. Mercuryo boasts partnerships with many of the same cryptocurrency companies as Advcash.
reported DirtyBubbleMedia.
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The mentioned “Mercuryo” and ADVcash recently signed a partnership. This led Burgersburg to believe Binance and other crypto exchanges might be overly fed by Russian influence.
At this time, we have no evidence to suggest that Advcash or Mercuryo are engaging in illegal activities or sanctions violations. However, given their close ties to one another, to at least one previous fraud, and their critical role within the wider crypto-conomy, we think that regulators and investigators might want to take a closer look at both firms…
concluded the report.
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