Binance is looking for new employees. Its chosen opening scenery comes with an unusually long sanctions history.
Yi He, Binance's co-founder and co-CEO and the longtime partner of former chief executive Changpeng Zhao, posted an 84-second recruitment video on Monday, July 27, writing, "We are hiring."
Two frames from Binance's hiring video show Moscow City skyscrapers, with the red-and-white TETS-12 chimney and curved Evolution Tower briefly visible between the buildings. Source: X
For about three seconds, the clip shows Moscow City, Moscow's financial district. Evolution Tower's curved facade flashes on the left for barely a second before the video moves on, while a red-and-white chimney behind the skyscrapers aligns with TETS-12, a Mosenergo power plant roughly two kilometers away.
- An OSINT analysis by The Coinformer geolocated the shot to Moscow City by matching the skyscraper layout and two red-and-white TETS-12 chimneys with a photograph published on Wikimedia Commons.
Then Russia vanishes. The film moves to people crossing a sleek office and other generic scenes as it introduces "Binancians," Binance's term for its employees and supporters.
An unfortunate postal code
The skyline isn't evidence of anything illegal, but the neighborhood's crypto résumé is unusually colorful.
The U.S. Treasury says Suex, Chatex and Garantex, three crypto exchanges it sanctioned after linking them to ransomware and other illicit finance, all operated from Federation Tower in Moscow City. More than 40% of Suex's known transaction history was associated with illicit actors, while Treasury tied over $100 million in Garantex transactions to criminals and darknet markets.
Binance announced in September 2023 that it would sell its entire Russian business because operating there was "not compatible with Binance's compliance strategy."
- CommEX, the exchange that bought the business, closed in May 2024.
Two months after announcing that sale, Binance pleaded guilty in the U.S. to anti-money-laundering, registration and sanctions violations and agreed to pay more than $4 billion.
There's no indication Binance filmed the skyline, selected it as a Russian reference or plans to return. It may simply be stock footage chosen by an editor.
But still, ironically enough, an exchange that left Russia for compliance reasons opened its hiring pitch with Moscow City, the former home of three sanctioned crypto exchanges.