Prohibited jurisdiction

The list belongs to the operator, not to a government. Kraken's help centre article on where it is licensed, last updated August 17, 2026, closes with a Prohibited Regions list of 14 names, while Binance's List of Prohibited Countries, dated 5 January 2026, names nine, and Cuba, Iran and North Korea are the only countries on both. Read the list of the exchange you intend to use, because a country absent from one is often present on the other.

How it works

A prohibited jurisdiction lives in a contract you accept at signup, which is why two exchanges can disagree about the same country without either of them being wrong. Binance's terms of use define the List of Prohibited Countries as the list accessible at a named binance.com URL, and clause 2.1(f) makes eligibility conditional on not being located, incorporated, otherwise established in, resident of, a citizen of, or operating in a jurisdiction on it. Kraken puts the same idea in plainer words: "We do not serve clients, or permit cash and crypto deposits, from the following regions."

The trigger is not always residence, and the difference decides real accounts. Binance's list runs in three tiers, and only the first one reaches citizenship: the United States is barred by location, incorporation, establishment, residence, citizenship or operation, while Canada and the Netherlands are barred by location, incorporation, establishment or residence alone. A Dutch citizen living in Lisbon may hold an account. An American living in Lisbon may not, because the passport travels with the person.

These are exclusion lists, and both say so in wording that leaves the door open. Binance's page covers "the below Countries, and such other locations, as designated by Binance from time to time", and clause 25.5 of its terms adds that services "may be wholly or partially restricted in some countries (including but not limited to our List of Prohibited Countries)". Kraken's article opens with "We welcome clients from all over the world, with a few specific exceptions due to international and local regulations" and then points to the terms of service for complete eligibility criteria. Silence about your country is therefore not a promise of service. It only means the operator has not written that country down.

Enforcement runs on what the operator collects and on what the contract forbids. Binance's clause 7.5.1 requires your full name, date of birth, nationality, legal domicile, current residential address and contact details before an account opens, together with a passport, national identity card or driver's license, which is what makes a citizenship tier enforceable at all. Kraken shows the address side of the same machinery one level down: it does not offer services to residents of Maine or New York, and tells anyone who moves out of those states to provide a Proof of Residence document so it can legally serve them at the new address. Binance's clause 25.5 covers the rest. If you travel to a location on the list, services may not be available and access may be blocked, and "You must not attempt in any way to circumvent any such restriction, including by use of any virtual private network to modify your internet protocol address."

Why this matters when you buy bitcoin

Prohibited jurisdiction lists decide which exchanges are worth comparing where you live, before fees enter the argument. This site publishes a ranked roster for each of its 231 country guides, ordered on fees, security record and local payment support, and those rosters can be checked against the two lists above: not one of the 12 countries on Kraken's list that the site covers ranks Kraken, and Binance appears in the roster of none of the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Cuba or Iran. A low headline fee cannot rescue a platform that will not open the account.

Two consequences follow for a reader. A legal market is not automatically a served market: the Netherlands is one of the 30 European Economic Area countries Kraken serves under its MiCA license, yet Binance's list bars Dutch residents outright, and the Dutch roster is led by Bitvavo with Kraken third and Binance absent. The mirror case matters just as much. Because both lists are open-ended, absence is not a yes: treat a country as a documented refusal only where the operator writes it down, and as unaddressed everywhere else, which is why an exchange missing from one list still has to be read against its terms.

When your country does appear, the honest fix is a different exchange, not a trick. The same page that refuses one country usually shows what a license looks like in another: Kraken serves Canada as a registered Restricted Dealer with the Ontario Securities Commission and the securities regulators of every province and territory, and as a money services business registered with FINTRAC, in the same country Binance's list bars by residence. One operator's refusal is another operator's regulated market.

Japan on Kraken's Prohibited Regions list

Japan sits on Kraken's Prohibited Regions list between Iraq and Libya, and it is the one entry there with nothing to do with sanctions or armed conflict. The other 13 are Afghanistan, Belarus, the Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Russia, Sudan, South Sudan and Syria. Japan is a wealthy economy that licenses crypto exchanges of its own.

What put it on the list was a commercial decision with a date attached. Kraken published a notice that it stopped operating in Japan and gave up its Financial Services Agency registration as of January 31, 2023. Everything after that withdrawal reads as a prohibition, because the contract has only one column for "we do not serve you here".

That is the most useful thing to know about any of these lists. A name on one can mean a comprehensive sanctions program, a licensing regime the operator declined to enter, or a market it walked away from years ago, and the page will not tell you which. The same company that refuses Japanese clients went live in all 30 countries of the European Economic Area under its MiCA license, authorized by the Central Bank of Ireland.

Prohibited jurisdiction vs Cryptocurrency ban

A prohibited jurisdiction is one company's refusal to serve a place, while a cryptocurrency ban is a state's prohibition on the activity itself, and the two overlap far less than the names suggest. Canada prohibits nothing of the sort: it runs a registration regime, and Binance still puts it in the second tier of its list. Japan prohibits nothing either, and Kraken left anyway. Both are prohibited jurisdictions for one operator and ordinary markets for several others.

The direction of the obligation is the tell. A ban binds you, and breaching it is a legal problem in your own country. A prohibited jurisdiction binds the exchange, and the cost of a mismatch falls on your account instead: a refused application, or a closure notice and a forced withdrawal months later.

Prohibited jurisdiction vs Sanctions screening

Sanctions screening checks a named person, entity or bitcoin address against government blocked-party lists, while a prohibited jurisdiction is a geographic rule applied before anyone examines who you are. The first can flag an account in a completely unrestricted country because of a counterparty a few hops away; the second is settled by the country field on a form.

Sanctions programs are one input into these lists, which is why Cuba, Iran, North Korea and the Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions turn up on both operators' pages. They are not the only input. A list that mixes them with a market exit like Japan and with licensing choices like Canada and the Netherlands cannot be read as a sanctions list, and treating it as one will give you the wrong idea about the country you live in.