Binance Poaches Ripple’s Catherine Coley to Lead US Branch

A senior executive from Ripple has been appointed to lead Binance.US, the US arm of the by volume, which will be specifically targeted to American traders.
According to an announcement on Tuesday, Catherine Coley, the former head of  XRP Institutional Liquidity will join the fledgling U.S. exchange as CEO, and will manage its operations and oversee the platform’s technology development going forward.

Catherine recently left after a two-year term with the San Francisco-based ‎crypto startup, where she worked with custody agents, exchanges, market makers, fund managers, OTC desks, and institutional investors. She joins the influential crypto exchange with an extensive background in traditional financial institutions, having served as a Foreign Exchange Advisor at Silicon Valley Bank.

Prior to that, Catherine had worked at Morgan Stanley’s FX business for over five years across several regions, including Europe and Hong Kong. During this tenure, she built a client pipeline of Asia-focused FX business among European hedge fund clients and asset managers, her Linkedin shows.
Binance opens dedicated US platform
Coley’s appointment comes at a time when the Malta-based trading platform is moving toward a formal launch in the US, just as the Changpeng Zhao-led firm announced it is from trading on Binance.com.
The move would see Binance partnering with BAM Trading Services, a FinCEN-registered company to roll out “Binance US,” exclusively for customers based in the United States. Binance will license its matching engine and wallet technologies to its US partner which would handle operations into compliance with local regulations.
Binance’s strategy officer last week that opening up a separate US-based exchange would help minimize the risk of heavy-handed regulators overstepping their bounds. Although he didn’t give a firm timeline for the launch of the US branch, but Chao expects to debut the business before the end of 2019.
“I don’t think we have a definite date at this stage, but it’s likely to be in the next quarter or so. You know, the regulators are making moves so these are the steps that we need to take unfortunately,” he said.