Binance Halts All Trading for 12 Hrs Over Irregular Syscoin (SYS) Transactions 10

Binance Halts All Trading for 12 Hrs Over Irregular Syscoin (SYS) Transactions

Popular cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, made the executive decision to halt all trading, withdrawals and deposits beginning yesterday at 20:18 (UTC) due to irregular trades that were detected from a number of API users. The internal risk management system of the exchange was what was triggered by the abnormal behavior prompting the sudden stoppage of trading activities.

The exchange has since resumed trading today at 8:00 AM (UTC) with users being able to now trade, cancel orders, process deposits and withdrawals as well as other account related activities. The exchange can be lauded for constantly communicating with users with respect to the on-goings of the maintenance that was undertaken to resolve the issue.

The cryptocurrency that was affected by the abnormal trading was Syscoin (SYS). The team at the project was quick to request all exchanges to halt trading and communicating the same via twitter.

Details from Binance indicate that the abnormal trading was from a number of API users as earlier mentioned. The exchange has since taken the following actions to further deal with the issue.

  • Removed all existing API keys and requested API users to recreate them. The exchange further cautioned users to keep their API keys safe as well as not providing access to third-party service providers
  • Non-regular traders on Binance are cautioned against creating API keys
  • Rollback of irregular trades
  • Any user negatively affected by choosing to trade the rising SYS price is requested to open a support ticket. There will also be free trading between 2018/07/05 – 2018/07/14 for the said users
  • For all other users, Binance will offer a 70% rebate on trading fees paid between 2018/07/05 – 2018/07/14. The rebate will be given and calculated in BNB using the closing price on 2018/07/14
  • To protect the future interests of all users, Binance will create a Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU). Starting from 2018/07/14, we will allocate 10% of all trading fees received into SAFU to offer protection to our users and their funds in extreme cases. This fund will be stored in a separate cold wallet

Binance also acknowledged the risks of rapid growth for such a young (1 year old) exchange.With growth comes growing pains that should be used as learning opportunities and avenues for improvement. The exchange also thanked its users and supporters through their positive comments, suggestions and feedback during the period of maintenance to resolve the SYS issue.