European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde reportedly moved to stall Binance‘s bid for an EU-wide crypto licence, according to The Wall Street Journal.

That account traces to a senior official at the Hellenic Capital Market Commission (HCMC), who told Binance the delay was understood to be linked to Lagarde’s involvement with Greek regulators.

Binance missed the 1 July deadline under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) rules, losing the ability to advertise its platform to an estimated 450 million people across the bloc.

Crypto exchange licensing decisions fall to national regulators under MiCA, the EU’s new digital-asset rulebook, not the ECB itself.

Greek officials had told EU coordinators in early June, according to the same account, that they intended to approve the licence.

The vice chair’s account, believed to have reached Binance within a day, suggested Lagarde had raised the matter with Mitsotakis and was allegedly against approving it.

A ministry adviser, Vassilis Karatzas, maintained that the HCMC operates independently, adding that “the Greek Government had no role whatsoever in its assessment of Binance’s application”.

A spokesperson for the HCMC pushed back on claims that its officials had made the remarks attributed to them, declining to elaborate further.

The vice chair also indicated Lagarde appeared to prefer EU-level oversight over national approval, partly out of concern that Binance’s scale could crowd out euro-denominated stablecoins in favour of dollar ones.

Binance pulled the application in mid-June, avoiding a formal rejection from the HCMC board, noting it intended to seek a licence in another EU member state.

Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Switzerland, based on an official Christine Lagarde portrait by the European Union via Wikimedia Commons and user26852285 via Magnific.