29.03.2024

Binance Halts Trading to Resolve Technical Problem

An announcement published by Binance on Feb. 19 notes that, due to unscheduled system maintenance, the exchange suspended most of its activities. More precisely, as of press time, it is not possible to perform “deposits, withdrawals, spot trading, margin trading, P2P trading, lending, redemption, as well as asset transfers from sub-accounts, margin accounts, futures accounts, and fiat wallets” on the platform.

Major cryptocurrency exchange Binance halted trading on its platform to resolve an unexpected technical issue with its infrastructure.

In a statement shared with Cointelegraph, Binance reassured its users that partner exchanges such as Binance.US were unaffected and that trading activity will resume shortly.

No funds were lost

Binance co-founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao explained in a tweet sent earlier today that one of the market data pushers experienced an issue, but the matching engine did not, so no funds or data were lost. He also said in a separate message that futures trading is continuing normally since it employs a separate matching engine.

In an attempt to compensate users for the market disruption, Zhao also promised to waive the trader margin interests for today. In his latest update as of press time, he said that the issues are nearly resolved and that users will have 30 minutes to cancel their orders before normal trading resumes.

Just the latest problem experience by Binance users

This is just the latest issue experienced by Binance users this month. On Feb. 17, Binance released a separate report on performance problems. In the report, the firm admits that it did not anticipate the volume of users who recently started using its platform. The paper reads:

“Last week was a tough one. … We had a number of performance issues, which negatively impacted the accessibility of our platform.”

Per the report, Binance’s trading platform was unable to manage all users and keep market data, orders and balances up to date. The firm promises to solve these issues soon, and encourages users who were damaged by the performance issues to contact the exchange’s support.

The fear of unscheduled exchange maintenance

Some Twitter users expressed concern and fear that Binance may have fallen victim to a hack, but there is no evidence suggesting that this is the case. In fact, the performance issues recently reported by the exchange and its users add further credibility to the cause being a simple technical problem.

Korean ICO Project Shuts Down, Says ‘Negative Perceptions’ of Crypto Made Business Impossible

An $8 million ICO project is shutting down, citing regulatory uncertainty and difficulties in onboarding new users.Content-sharing platform Contents Protocol announced Wednesday that following numerous attempts to turn its business into a success, the firm is closing down and refunding investors as much as $7.5 million-worth of the ether (ETH) raised in its initial coin offering (ICO).

«We inform you that due to continued regulatory uncertainties in cryptocurrency and lack of business prospects, we have decided to end our project,» reads an announcement that has replaced Contents Protocol’s website.

Contents Protocol was a relative latecomer to the ICO boom, only completing its crowd sale in December 2018. It was created as a subsidiary of WATCHA Play, a popular Korean streaming service, and was designed to incentivize content sharing by effectively rewarding users who rated and reviewed films and TV featured on the platform with its native CPT token.

«The main thing that the blockchain allows us to do is … compensate a new participant users who really provide free marketing for the content,» said John Kim, Contents Protocol’s global business developer, in an interview with Ran NeuNer for CNBC, back in May 2018.

The project aimed to become profitable by processing and analyzing sharing data, which could subsequently be sold back to content providers to inform them on which movies and TV series should be featured on their platforms.

But in Wednesday’s announcement, Contents Protocol complained that few consumers wanted to use the platform because of the «negative perception toward cryptocurrency, price volatility and complex user experience.»

The company said anti-crypto attitudes were unlikely to improve in the short term, and would impact how digital assets would be regulated in the future. Without a strong user base, it also made it difficult to encourage other content providers to provide data for the platform, limiting any possible insights that could be subsequently sold back to platforms.

Contents Protocol raised 29,333 ETH ($8.1 million) in its private and public ICOs in 2018. All remaining assets, worth approximately $7.5 million, have now been converted back into ether and will be distributed to investors who have requested refunds.

CPT token holders will also be able to exchange them at a rate of one token for $0.002 worth of ether. All CPT collected will be destroyed when the company enters the liquidation process, the company said.

According to Contents Protocol’s asset records, around 3,800 ETH was exchanged into $1.45 million to fund business operations. Although some of the funds were converted into bitcoin (BTC), the vast majority of assets remained in ether throughout the company’s lifetime.

A company spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

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