•Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, encountered a bug in its matching engine and temporarily halted spot trading.
•Depositing and withdrawing funds were paused as a standard operating procedure, however funds remain safe.
•The team is running pre-trading tests with an estimated 60 minutes ETA for crypto trading to resume.
Binance Halts Spot Trading After Bug Detected
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, earlier today, on March 24th, temporarily halted spot trading due to a matching engine glitch that disrupted the platform.
Withdrawal and Depositing Halted
The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), said they detected a bug during an analysis of a trailing stop order recovery. As a result, the exchange temporarily had to pause deposits and withdrawals as part of their standard operating procedure (SOP).
Crypto Spot Trading Defined
Crypto spot traders buy or sell assets without using leverage positions. That means users can directly swap crypto or fiat for other crypto assets and vice versa. Spot trading is distinct from derivatives trading where traders can open Bitcoin or BNB positions for example using leverage or borrowing money from the exchange for bigger risk.
Pre-Trading Tests Run Before Resuming Crypto Trading
After identifying the issue with Engine 1, Binance restarted it but reconciliations and engine sync-ups will require time as the bug occurred 57 minutes after hourly snapshots. CZ noted that depositing would be enabled followed by internal transfers then there would be a 30 minute “cancel-only period” before crypto trading resumes.
100% Uptime Achieved In 2022
In 2022 Binance had achieved 100% uptime according to CZ so in future team will run pre-trading tests before resuming operations on the platform.