I'm just surprised that the Maltese governmen is only saying it now when Binance is actually opersting fir years now. It just makes me wonder if this is some kind of washing of hands by the government since now the European governing bodies are implementing strict sanctions with their AML procedures.
It could also be that they just didn't give a single shit about the crypto space until now. People always seem to come up with the most ridiculous conspiracy theories, but in most cases, things aren't like that at all.
In the end, people should be doing research before using an exchange. Binance's core business model is to operate outside the regulatory field, because that's where most of their profits come from. This is how they became the world's largest exchange by volume and userbase. I don't recall them having done anything else from their .com platform.
Time will tell how their US platform will perform, but I doubt it will challenge Coinbase or Bitstamp in any way.