Binance is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by volume and is also the most popular exchange among crypto enthusiasts. The platform is at the forefront of the evolution of cryptocurrency exchanges over the years. But the crypto industry is still young, and even the best in the industry often stumble upon some technical problems.

On February 19th, Binance suspended trading and went for “temporary system maintenance.” This caught traders unaware as Binance has a good reputation about being the most active cryptocurrency exchange with not much downtime. In fact, this time around, it was the spot exchange that was affected.

The announcement from Binance right after operations were paused, read:

“Binance is undergoing temporary system maintenance. Binance has suspended 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.”

However, Futures trading was not affected and the service was live.

The event sparked panic among Binance users who started to speculate that the exchange might have been hacked. The assumption is nothing unlikely as multiple hacks prior to this on several cryptocurrency exchanges have followed temporary pausing of services. The exchanges tend to do this to control the damage caused.

Furthermore, the sudden pause on trading on Binance happened to coincide with a fresh minting of 60M tether. Many in the community believed that this was not a coincidence and suggested that a huge pump was on its way.

#SAFU

To address the various rumors surrounding the event, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, immediately took to Twitter to notify users that an “unscheduled maintenance” was on-going. He assured the community that all the user funds are safe. Cz wrote:

“Funds are #SAFU. No need to panic. One of the market data pushers had issues; matching engine was fine, no data loss or corruption (other than market data). Working on it. Should be fixed soon.”

About the exchange’s futures trading platform, he said:

Futures, using a separate matching engine, is still working fine. But no fund transfers between the products.



P2P and most other trading services are paused. — CZ Binance (@cz_binance) February 19, 2020

Finally, six hours later, the exchange made another announcement that notified customers that the system maintenance was successfully completed. In the most recent announcement, Binance stated:

“Binance has completed temporary system maintenance and we will resume all trading activity at 2020/02/19 5:30 PM (UTC). From now until the commencement of trading, users will be able to begin cancelling orders, processing deposits, trade on C2C, lending and redemptions, asset transfers and use all other account-related functions. Withdrawals will be resumed shortly after trading starts.”

Despite the unannounced downtime, Binance still managed to address the situation swiftly to avoid FUD. The exchange is an industry leader in terms of matching engine, security controls, and liquidity as well as custodial services.

Recently, the exchange launched Binance Cloud, an all-in-one infrastructure platform that enables the launching of digital asset exchanges based on the underlying technologies used by the exchange itself. According to CZ, the new service is aimed at regions that are not covered by Binance itself. He also added that this service would allow users to launch an exchange in three to five days if all other formalities have been met.