Is Binance Available in the US? Ban, Binance.US, and Alternatives

Short answer: no. Binance.com — the global exchange with the deep liquidity, the futures products, and the referral program everyone searches for — does not accept US residents, and hasn’t for years. There is a separate American company called Binance.US, but it’s a different platform with a different feature set, and the two are frequently confused by coupon sites that would rather you click first and read the terms later. Here’s the actual history, what your options are if you’re in the United States, and why the popular workaround (a VPN) is a worse idea than it sounds.

The 2019 block: when Binance.com shut the door on Americans

Binance launched in 2017 and initially served US customers like everyone else. That ended in 2019, when the company updated its terms of use to exclude “US persons” and began geoblocking American IP addresses. At the same time, it announced Binance.US — a separate exchange operated by a US company (BAM Trading Services) that licenses the Binance brand and technology but runs its own order books, its own coin listings, and its own compliance program.

The reason was regulatory. Operating a crypto exchange for US customers means registering with FinCEN as a money services business, following the Bank Secrecy Act’s anti-money-laundering rules, screening for sanctioned users, and — depending on the products — answering to the CFTC and SEC. Binance.com’s global, everything-listed, derivatives-heavy model was not built for that, so the company drew a line: Americans get the domestic entity, everyone else gets the global one.

In practice, the 2019 line was blurry. Which brings us to 2023.

The 2023 settlement: why the block is now permanent-feeling

In November 2023, Binance pleaded guilty to federal charges — including failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program and violating US sanctions law — and agreed to pay roughly $4.3 billion across settlements with the Department of Justice, FinCEN, and OFAC. Founder and then-CEO Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty personally, stepped down, and later served a short prison sentence. The details are in the Department of Justice’s announcement of the resolution.

Two parts of that settlement matter for anyone reading this from the US:

1. Court filings established that Binance knew US users were on the global platform and, for years, didn’t do enough about it. Part of the case was precisely that the 2019 “block” leaked — VIP customers and VPN users kept trading. That era is over.
2. Binance agreed to a complete exit from the US market and to years of independent compliance monitoring. The company now has multibillion-dollar reasons to detect and eject American users, and a monitor checking that it does.

(The SEC had also filed a separate civil lawsuit against Binance and Binance.US in 2023; that case was later dropped. The criminal settlement and the US-market exit stand regardless.)

So when Binance.com’s terms say no US persons, it isn’t boilerplate. It’s a condition of the company’s continued existence.

Binance.US: real, legal, and genuinely limited

Binance.US is available to Americans in most — not all — states; a handful, historically including New York, have never been served. It offers spot trading on a much shorter list of coins than the global exchange, and it does not offer the products that made Binance.com famous: no futures, no options, no margin for retail users, no launchpad token sales.

It has also had a rocky ride. After the 2023 regulatory storm, its banking partners pulled back and the platform went crypto-only for an extended stretch — no dollar deposits or withdrawals — before eventually restoring USD services. Trading volume fell off a cliff during that period and has never returned to its former levels, which matters practically: thinner order books mean worse prices on larger trades.

None of that makes Binance.US a scam — it’s a licensed, functioning US exchange. But if you searched “is Binance available in the US” hoping the answer was “yes, the real one,” Binance.US is not that. It’s a smaller, plainer exchange wearing the same logo.

One more thing: Binance.US runs its own promotions and referral system, separate from Binance.com’s. A Binance.com referral ID does nothing on Binance.US, and vice versa. Our Binance referral code hub covers the global program — which, again, US residents cannot use — including the honest math on the fee kickback (invitees can receive at most a 20% share of trading-fee commission, whatever other pages promise); the full mechanics of both referral systems are in how the Binance referral program actually works.

Why the VPN workaround fails — and can cost you your funds

The obvious dodge is a VPN: connect through Frankfurt or Singapore, register on Binance.com, done. Here’s why that plan falls apart.

The IP block is the easy layer. KYC is the hard one. KYC (“know your customer”) is the identity-verification step every regulated exchange requires: government ID, a selfie, sometimes proof of address. Binance.com requires it before you can deposit meaningfully or withdraw at all — and a US passport or driver’s license fails the check by design. No verification, no functional account, referral rewards included.

Fake documents turn a bad idea into a crime. Getting past KYC with someone else’s documents or forged ones isn’t a gray area; it’s fraud.

Even a “successful” workaround is a standing risk to your money. Binance’s terms let it freeze accounts and confiscate access when it finds a prohibited user, and post-settlement it actively re-screens: residence checks, re-verification requests, withdrawal reviews. People in this situation get discovered at the worst time — usually when withdrawing — and find their funds locked pending proof of a residence they don’t have. You’d have no regulator to complain to, because your entire position depends on having lied to the platform.

And the taxes don’t go away. US persons owe tax on crypto gains wherever the exchange sits — the IRS’s digital assets guidance applies to offshore accounts too, plus foreign-account reporting rules. A VPN changes your apparent location, not your tax residency.

Weigh that against the prize: a fee discount capped at 20% of trading commissions and eligibility for task-based vouchers. It’s not worth it. It was arguably never worth it.

What US users can actually do

For stocks plus mainstream crypto: Robinhood’s referral program is US-only by design and genuinely works — new users who get approved receive gift stock worth between $5 and $200. Be clear-eyed about the odds: roughly 98% of people land at the bottom of that range, and the reward triggers on application approval (SSN required), not on depositing money. A likely $5 in free stock is a modest prize, but unlike a Binance.com workaround, it’s real and legal.

For dedicated crypto exchanges: Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini are the established US-regulated options — all registered with FinCEN, all serving US customers openly, each with its own state-by-state quirks. We now list verified Coinbase codes on our Coinbase hub — including an honest note about which of its two referral programs actually pays the new user. For Kraken and Gemini we don’t list codes (we only publish codes from accounts we control and can verify — see how we verify), so treat those as pointers, not pitches: if you want a Binance-like spot exchange as a US resident, that’s the shortlist to compare on fees and coin selection — we’ve compared how Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken structure their sign-up offers if the welcome bonus is part of your decision.

If you move abroad: genuine non-US residency changes the answer — Binance.com serves most of the world, and a referral ID entered at registration (it can’t be added afterward) gets you the fee kickback and campaign eligibility described on our hub. But that’s a life decision, not a coupon strategy.

The bottom line

Binance.com is not available in the US, the 2023 settlement made that block serious rather than nominal, and Binance.US is a legitimate but much smaller consolation prize. VPN workarounds fail at identity verification, and the ones that don’t fail immediately put your funds one compliance sweep away from a freeze. For a US resident, the rational move is a domestic platform — even if the sign-up bonus is a humble five bucks instead of an imaginary $250.