Binance suffered a breakdown on its trading engine that lasted for about two hours, but the premier cryptocurrency exchange finally managed to restore normal operations at around 14:00 UTC.
Spot trading on Binance’s platforms, including P2P marketplace, was briefly halted on Friday due to an apparent technical issue. In a standard operating procedure, the exchange suspended deposits and withdrawals, but confirmed all funds are safe.
To help allay some of the suspicions that arose due to the outage, Binance issued an update at this time saying it became aware of the issue. “We are aware of an issue impacting spot trading on Binance. All spot trading is currently temporarily suspended as we work to resolve this as soon as possible.”
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao also took to Twitter to explain that the initial analysis indicates matching engine encountered a bug on a trailing stop order, adding that the issue is expected to be fixed in up to 120 minutes.
CZ also warned traders of price fluctuations that may occur once the issues are resolved and trading resumes.
“When the biggest exchange halts trading, prices won’t move much. If it moves on smaller exchanges, when Binance comes back, our deeper orderbook will bring the price back, causing those guys to lose money. Traders know this,” he added.
According to its most recent update, Binance reinstated spot trading and other features of the platform after shutting them down for nearly two hours. It initially restored operations back online via cancel only mode until 13:40 UTC, where no new orders were placed. The exchange confirmed that no liquidations occurred during the downtime but didn’t provide many details about the incident as its staff still investigating the matter.
Binance users are now able to cancel orders, process deposits, trade on P2P, and perform lending, redemptions, asset transfers and all other account-related functions. Withdrawals will be resumed shortly after spot trading starts, the exchange confirms.
Trailing stop order, however, will be temporarily suspended until further notice and the existing orders have expired automatically.
“It is recommended that futures and margin trading users with open positions re-assess their collateral balances prior to the start of spot trading to mitigate against price fluctuations that may occur,” Binance wrote.
