Breaking: Binance Temporarily Stops Spot Trading

Updated: 06 June 2024

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Crypto exchange Binance temporarily halted spot trading earlier on Friday due to issues impacting its trading platform.

What: Binance temporarily suspended spot trading on its platform on March 24.

Why: The crypto exchange said bugs affected its spot trading functionalities.

What Next: Trading resumed at 2PM UTC with withdrawals expected to resume shortly after.

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, temporarily suspended spot trading on Friday due to issues affecting its platform. Binance acknowledged the problem in a tweet soon after the issues were discovered:

Initial analysis indicates matching engine encountered a bug on a trailing stop order (a weird one). Recovering. Est 30-120 min ish. Waiting for more precise ETA.

Deposits & withdrawals are paused as a SOP (standard operating procedure). Funds are #SAFU. 🙏 https://t.co/mvtGQ3JlMA

— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) March 24, 2023

According to Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, the issue came after a “matching engine encountered a bug on a trailing stop order”, a phenomenon he described as “weird”. According to Zhao:

Initial analysis indicates a matching engine encountered a bug on a trailing stop order (a weird one). Recovering. Est 30-120 min ish. Waiting for more precise ETA.

The Binance executive further indicated deposits and withdrawals are “paused as an SOP (standard operating procedure)” assuring his customers that their funds were safe.

The bug disrupted trading on the platform, and by extension the wider crypto market. For example, Bitcoin dipped by $700 before recovering partly from the drop.

The incident has left traders and investors in a state of anxiety, questioning the stability of the platform and the safety of their funds. Some users joked about the suspension while others suggested using decentralized exchanges (DEXs) instead.

As recovery efforts were underway, the exchange continued providing further information, updating users that “Engine 1 is back online” but it would take more time “to do reconciliations and for the other engines to catch up.”

Engine 1 is back online. Still need more time to do reconciliations, and for other engines to catch up.

We were a bit unlucky with this bug. Our engines take hourly snapshots. This bug happened 57 min in. So, replay/reconciliation takes a bit longer.

— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) March 24, 2023

Zhao admitted the unfortunate timing of the bug, which occurred 57 minutes into an hourly snapshot, prolonging the reconciliation process.

Trading Resumes At 2PM UTC

Further updates from the Binance CEO revealed that some services had been restored as the team carried out pre-trading tests. Some of the services that had been enabled included deposits, internal transfers, with withdrawals to be enabled one hour after trading resumed.

Est 60 min ish ETA. Our team's doing pre-trading tests now. For those new with us, our resume SOP is roughly as follows:

Announcement with exact times (soon).
Deposit enabled (done now).
Internal transfers enabled (done now).
30 min of cancel-only mode (not yet)
Resume trading… https://t.co/ZtkhTkD1CD

— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) March 24, 2023

According to the latest update on the incident, the exchange informed its users that the temporary system maintenance was complete and that trading was to resume at 2PM UTC. A statement of the company’s website read:

Binance has completed temporary system maintenance and will resume all trading activity at 2023-03-24 14:00 (UTC). Starting from now, users will be able to cancel orders, process deposits, trade on P2P, and perform lending, redemptions, asset transfers and all other account-related functions.

The statement said that users would be able to withdraw their funds from the platform “shortly after spot trading starts.”

As the global leader in cryptocurrency trading, Binance’s temporary suspension of spot trading has undoubtedly sent shockwaves through the digital asset market.

Even as the exchange appears to have successfully resolved the issue, the incident serves as a reminder of the potential pitfalls and complexities associated with the ever-evolving world of cryptocurrencies.

For now, investors and traders can continue to trade as they await full functionality to be restored on Binance.