Binance – the world’s largest and most popular digital currency exchange per daily market data – gave traders a bit of a scare in late March when it put a temporary halt in place on spot trading, citing system glitches as the reason for doing so. The move only lasted a few hours and trading was quickly restored on the platform, but it had a few people shaking in their boots.
Binance Briefly Stopped Trading Over a Month Ago
The trading firm issued a statement claiming that there was a “bug on a trailing stop order.” CEO Changpeng Zhao commented in a tweet that temporarily stopping all deposits and withdrawals was standard procedure when such a thing occurred, and that traders could expect to resume activities soon. True to his word, the halt only lasted a few hours.
At the time of writing, there doesn’t appear to be anything further behind the stoppage. This was later confirmed by Ilya Volkov, the CEO of You Hodler. Ilya said that there was merely a technical glitch in play, and that crypto prices weren’t likely to be heavily affected following the pause, though bitcoin appeared to take the new badly and dropped into the high $27K range (about $500 less than where it had been just a day earlier). Volkov commented:
These kinds of bugs could happen everywhere, and crypto exchanges are not unique.
The main reason, however, why so many people took the stoppage personally or as bigger than it probably was is because this is not the first time Binance has taken such action. In fact, over the past few months, the large digital exchange has made a real name for itself when it comes to halting and stopping specific trades or currencies from being utilized.
For example, in mid-March, the company announced it would be halting all future sterling deposits and withdrawals, and that the currency would no longer be applicable to investment methods or trades through its platform. This followed USD transfers, which ended in February of this year.
Binance has also been subjected to ongoing investigations as of late for what are alleged to be money laundering practices. A top executive of the firm has told news outlets that the company plans to pay penalty fees in the coming future to relieve the charges and end any further investigations.
The SEC Has Been Relentless
It’s unclear if Binance really took part in wrongdoing at the time of writing, or if the investigations are just more efforts from agencies such as the SEC to bring down crypto in America and beyond.
The crypto regulatory crackdowns have become extreme in the past few weeks. Agencies such as the SEC have targeted firms such as Kraken, and it recently sent a Wells notice to crypto exchange Coinbase.
