Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has encountered major issues with spot trading on the platform. According to an announcement from Binance’s official Twitter account, on March 24, Binance suspended all spot transactions.
“We are aware of an issue affecting spot trading on Binance. Currently, all spot trading is suspended as we work to resolve this issue as quickly as possible,” Binance wrote. Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao later reported on Twitter that preliminary analysis indicated a bug in the matching engine. He noted that the error, which was discovered on a trailing stop order, was expected to be fixed in up to 120 minutes. “Deposits and withdrawals are paused as a standard operating procedure. Funds are #SAFU,” CZ wrote.
With all spot trading and deposits and withdrawals on Binance suspended, CZ continued to tweet to calm concerned investors and traders. He mentions that transistor engineers had to literally remove bugs from the system every now and then in the 1940s to maintain operations. CZ also argued that the issues are unlikely to have any significant impact on the market, saying:
"When the largest exchanges stop trading, the price doesn't move much. If it moves on the smaller exchanges, when Binance comes back, our deeper order books will bring the price back, causing those people to lose money. Trading staff know this.”
About an hour after Binance publicly announced the issue, the exchange partially resolved the issue, bringing one of its engines back online, according to CZ. "Engine #1 is back online. Still needs more time to reconcile and for other engines to catch up," he wrote, adding that reconciliations will take longer.
Less than two hours after the initial announcement, Binance announced that it had completed temporary system maintenance in preparation for resuming all trading activity by 2 p.m. UTC. Binance said that from this point on, sers will be able to cancel orders, process deposits, conduct P2P transactions, and perform lending, redemption, asset transfers, and all other account-related functions. "Withdrawals will resume shortly after spot trading begins," the company added.
