(Bloomberg) --

Binance is courting Germany’s financial regulator over a license to operate in the country, a little over a year after it was admonished for offering stock-like tokens without publishing an investor prospectus.

Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao, the chief executive of the crypto exchange, said Binance is in discussions with BaFin as part of plans to grow its presence in Germany. BaFin requires any business wishing to offer custody of cryptoassets to acquire a license. 

“Our team definitely is talking with regulators here and in all of Europe,” Zhao said in an interview at the Finance Forward fintech conference in Hamburg on Wednesday. “I have not talked to them myself directly, but based on my secondary feedback from our team, things are going well.”

Zhao declined to provide further details because the conversations are confidential. He added that Binance is “hiring a lot more people” in Germany, particularly on its compliance team.

“We’re doing a much better job communicating with regulators here. We still hope to get a license in Germany, and we want to grow our market here,” he said.

Binance’s announcement follows a warning from BaFin in April last year over the exchange’s offering of crypto-like tokens tied to the performance of popular US stocks like Tesla Inc., MicroStrategy Inc. and Coinbase Global Inc. The tokens were intended to act like synthetic shares backed by actual stock, Binance said at the time, allowing investors to benefit from a company’s stock performance and dividends, but without shareholder rights like voting privileges.

Tesla Tokens From Crypto Exchange Binance Draw BaFin Scrutiny

BaFin said in a statement at the time that Binance may have violated security rules. A spokesperson for the regulator said on Wednesday that it does not comment on individual cases.

The Germany discussions come after Binance secured regulatory approval from the French government earlier this month, providing the exchange with digital-asset service provider registration to make Paris its European hub. 

Zhao had previously confirmed Binance would make a 100 million-euro ($105 million) investment into France’s blockchain ecosystem and hire up to 250 people to work on infrastructure development.

(Adds BaFin declined to comment.)

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