Philippine SEC Said Binance Lacked Authority to Offer Securities

The Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission issued an advisory dated November 28, 2023 stating that Binance was not authorized to sell or offer securities to the public in the Philippines.

The regulator said its database showed that the operator of Binance was not registered as a Philippine corporation and lacked the necessary local license or authority to sell securities, conduct business as a broker or dealer, or operate an exchange for securities. Those were the commission’s regulatory findings; the advisory was not a judicial decision.

Access did not establish authorization

The SEC said Binance was accessible through its website and applications distributed through Google Play and Apple’s App Store. It also said the exchange had used social-media campaigns to attract Filipinos to investment and trading activities.

That distinction mattered for globally accessible crypto platforms. A website or application could reach residents of a jurisdiction without the operator holding the registrations that local authorities considered necessary. The November 28 advisory treated Binance’s availability and promotion inside the Philippines as separate from authorization under Philippine securities law.

The SEC described Binance’s advertised products as including leveraged spot trading, futures, options, crypto savings accounts, staking services and an initial-coin-offering platform. The list recorded the regulator’s characterization of services promoted on Binance’s website. It did not establish that every crypto asset, customer transaction or product available through Binance had been adjudicated to be a security.

Promoters were placed within the warning

The advisory did more than caution prospective customers. It said salespeople, brokers, dealers, agents, representatives, promoters, recruiters, influencers, endorsers and other enablers who sold or persuaded people in the Philippines to invest through Binance could face criminal liability under the Securities Regulation Code.

The SEC identified a possible maximum penalty of 5 million Philippine pesos, imprisonment of 21 years, or both. These were statutory maximums cited by the regulator, not penalties already imposed on Binance, its customers or any named promoter. The advisory did not identify a charged individual or announce a completed prosecution.

What the notice changed—and what it did not

The immediate verified development was a formal public warning from the country’s securities regulator. It placed Binance’s local registration status on the official record and signaled that the commission viewed online promotion and intermediation—not only an exchange’s physical location—as conduct within its remit.

The document did not order customer assets frozen, report that Binance was insolvent, or quantify Philippine deposits, users, trading volume or losses. It also did not provide an implementation order blocking the website or applications. Those limitations prevent measuring the advisory’s event-day effect on customers or the wider crypto market.

No cryptocurrency price or trading-volume claim is included here. Digital-asset markets trade continuously across venues, and the surviving records do not supply a consistent instrument, exchange, timestamp or causal window with which to attribute a market move to the advisory.

Later clarification on November 29

On November 29, the SEC told news organizations that it intended to seek assistance from Philippine telecommunications and information-technology authorities to block access to Binance. It said removal of access was expected within three months of the November 28 advisory, allowing investors time to close positions and withdraw investments, and that Google and Meta had been asked to stop displaying Binance advertisements to Philippine users. Binance responded that it acknowledged and respected the commission’s statement and was working to address its concerns. Those implementation details were disclosed after the dated advisory and are presented as later context, not as content contained in the November 28 document.