Leading crypto exchange, Binance, is in talks with Indonesia’s apex financial institutions and leading telecom operator in Indonesia to establish its operations in that area.

Binance’s Continued Expansion Efforts

If successful, it would enhance the exchange’s reputation in that area and the broader adoption of digital assets in that country. The exchange is yet to make an official statement regarding the matter. But, a high-ranking official of the company said, “everyone should keep in mind that we continue to make all efforts to enhance the growth of the blockchain industry worldwide, and that includes establishing our business operations in any region where we are accepted.”

A Bloomberg report was the first to make the revelation about this partnership. If the collaboration between the three industry heavyweights becomes a reality, it will benefit Indonesia’s economy. More importantly, the unbanked Indonesians (estimated at 274m) can now conduct financial transactions using their mobile devices.

The Partners In This Deal

Budi and Micheal Hartono (both siblings and billionaires in their own right) have controlling interests in PT bank central Asia. Binance also holds controlling interests in Tokocrypto v2.0 (a leading crypto exchange established four years ago in Indonesia). The crypto exchange was formerly known as Tokocrypto before the merger with Binance.

Despite being receptive to crypto firms, Indonesia’s apex bank is already in the research phase of establishing a national digital currency. During a recent interview with the Times of India, Juda Agung (a top-level executive at Indonesia’s apex bank) disclosed the bank’s primary reasons for launching a national digital currency. He said it is to curb the use of private digital currencies and provide a government-backed alternative payment settlement system for its citizens.

However, the Indonesian authorities appear to continue supporting private digital assets. Earlier in the year, there was a call by some religious leaders in the country to ban cryptocurrency. Still, the authorities refused but only restricted digital assets to complete payment transactions to appease the religious leaders.

The Indonesian government is not the only one struggling to deal with the fast-rising blockchain tech; many other nations have similar struggles. Hence, these nations resort to using regulatory policies to restrict the operations of crypto firms in their domain. Despite the restrictions, the fast growth of the digital asset industry has remained unhindered.

Binance Looking Upward

Binance has been seeking to expand its operations into Central Asia following regulatory challenges with different nations’ financial watchdogs for the past eleven months of this year. You’d recall that Binance Singapore announced the acquisition of a 19% stake in HG exchange (a Singapore-based stock exchange). Also, Binance was one of the leading investors in the BBS network (an Asian crypto social network), investing nearly $1.6m.

Despite making investments and mergers, Binance US is also about to complete an additional funding round which has already yielded multi-million investments from top VCs globally. Binance boss, Changpeng Zhao, disclosed last month that his company’s funding rounds should have produced “a couple hundred million” from VCs.