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Binance Reopens Trading Following Day-Long Downtime

Last Updated March 4, 2021 5:04 PM
Josiah Wilmoth
Last Updated March 4, 2021 5:04 PM

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance reopened trading on Friday morning following more than a day of system maintenance and rumors that it had become the latest trading platform to succumb to a hack.

Binance Reopens Trading Following Daylong Downtime

Trading resumed at 10 am UTC, approximately six hours after the company had said the platform would be back up and running, and users had access to the platform an hour beforehand to cancel open orders and make any deposits or withdrawals they needed to make before trading reopened.

As CCN.com reported, Binance — the world’s highest-volume cryptocurrency exchange — had abruptly gone offline Wednesday evening, and the company repeatedly extended the maintenance window, which it said stemmed from a failure in its replica database that required them to fully re-sync their data.

In addition to resuming trading, the exchange announced that it would provide a 70 percent discount on all trading fees until Feb. 24, and despite the inconvenience, the majority of social media users appeared pleased with the way the company had maintained steady communication regarding the downtime.

Exchange Proves Hack Rumors False

That said, the extended downtime led to whispers that the exchange had been hacked, whispers which grew louder once John McAfee said “top crypto influencers” were discussing whether the company’s servers had been breached.

This would have made Binance the second major exchange to be hacked in the last three weeks, as Japanese trading platform Coincheck fell prey to a historic $530 million hack at the end of January.

Binance and CEO Changpeng Zhao repeatedly denied the rumors, but McAfee’s tweets stirred the pot. To prove solvency, the company posted its wallet addresses so users could verify that funds had not been moved.

As of the time of writing, users reported being unable to access Binance through its primary domain address, which Zhao said was the result of a now-resolved DDoS attack on the company’s cloud provider that was still causing lingering issues. However, CCN.com was able to access both us.binance.com and kr.binance.com.

Featured image from Shutterstock.