Just 2 hours ago Binance suddenly announced that it would be going offline due to data syncing issues, they claim no data loss. They say they in the process of upgrading and resyncing and are expected to be back up in the next 12 hours.

Binance is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges and is the fastest growing startup in this space and possible in the tech industry as a whole, due to this they are experiencing some issues with their servers and are performing some sudden much needed maintenance. Visiting their home page shows an error 500, anxious traders were tweeting to Binance representatives to find out more and this was the response from their CEO.

We experienced a server issue on our replica database cluster, causing some data to be out of sync. Need to fully resync from master. Due the size of the data, it will take several hours. No data is lost. We appreciate your understanding and support. — CZ (@cz_binance) February 8, 2018

Their blog is still online for announcements.

Due to a significant increase in users and trading activity, Binance will need to extend the System upgrade and is expected to be completed by 2PM (UTC). Our team is working hard to complete this upgrade as quickly as possible. We will make an announcement to all users if completed ahead of schedule. Withdrawals and trading during this period will remain suspended. We apologize for any inconvenience caused and thank you for your patience. Thank you for your support.

Some hours prior to the announcement the exchange was already experiencing difficulties with executing trades on it’s exchange engine, they decided to halt trading for a complete server resynchronization, due to the size of the data needed to sync the exchange had no choice but to shut down. The exchange expects to be back up and trading by 4 pm South African time (GMT+2). In the meantime, traders will be unable to execute, change orders or withdraw funds.