Suspension of trading activities due to an update on Binance sparked confusion of hacking. However, the update is done and trading has resumed to normal again.
Earlier this week, on Wednesday, Feb 7, a lot of confusion was spurred out in the crypto market after popular cryptocurrency exchange ‘Binance’ suspended its trading without issuing any prior notice. This sudden suspension had sparked a lot of fear and anxiety within global investors as many started speculating that the exchange has been hacked.
However, responding to all the allegations, Binance CEO Changpeng ” CZ” Zhao quickly addressed all the investors through his Twitter handle said that there is nothing to worry about as this is a server issue and no data has been stolen or lost.
https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/961429082310258688
Zhao made it clear that the server slowdown was basically due to the fallout of sync and assured that the development would then re-sync from a master database. The exchange soon reported its customers that it working with every diligence to resolve the issue.
Happy to say that we are still on track for trading to recommence at 4 am UTC 2018/02/09.
Reminder: We will allow a 30-minute window where users can cancel open orders prior to trading being opened.
We will continue to update every two hours until the upgrade is complete.
— Binance (@binance) February 8, 2018
However, in the subsequent tweets, Zhao said that the maintenance has not worked out as per the plan and would take some more time, while still maintaining his stand that it was not a hack.
https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/961591259901997056
As things were not sorted out in the due time, it caused investors worry to grow further and more specifically because quite recently, Japan’s one of the biggest exchanges ‘Coincheck’ got hacked and reported a loss of a whopping $500 million of the customer’s money. In a further investigation by Japan’s financial watchdog, the Financial Services Agency, it was found out that the security lapses in protecting the customer wallets made it easy for hackers to steal the money.
Digital security expert John McAfee, who has also been an active cryptocurrency investor has to say this:
Binance has suspended trading. The company claims that they are doing a system upgrade and will resume at 2:00 AM GMT Friday. While I have no hard evidence, rumours are flying among top crypto influencers that they may have been hacked. Will keep you informed.
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) February 8, 2018
The Binance exchange was quick enough to respond to Mr. McAfee saying:
Binance has not been hacked. Please do not spread false information. If you want to keep updated on the status of our system upgrade you're welcome to follow @cz_binance or @binance_2017
— Binance (@binance) February 8, 2018
However, the cryptocurrency exchange has brought a final end to all the set of speculations as it has finally resumed all the trading activities like deposits and withdrawals, today.
Having made its customers wait for some and appreciating their patience and support the exchange said that it will further lower the trading fees by 70 till the 24th of Feb as a mark of “gratitude” for its user’s support.
System Upgrade Completehttps://t.co/LIoeKdGWpy pic.twitter.com/IBynIcyGbK
— Binance (@binance) February 9, 2018
However, in spite of the claimed system upgrade completion, users might probably still face some issue. Zhao in his latest tweet today, said that customers trying to access Binance.com might still face some more problems as the website’s cloud provider was under DDoS attack.
https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/961898898766770177
But later in a very short time, Zhao reported that Trading has resumed.
https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/961902611707211776
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