Binance is one of the top cryptocurrency exchange in the world with traffic reaching upto 1,183,000 visits per day (up 13% in April) as per @kerooke .
However after hackers stole 7000 bitcoins, Binance suspended all deposits and withdrawal without any further notice. We tried reaching Binance customer support but they mentioned the deposit and withdrawal may be operational mid of next week but denied to provide any exact date. There was no word of apologies for inconvenience especially when crypto withdrawals or deposit is suspended.
Many customers hoped that Binance sent them a notification email but there was not much from Binance and this has shook the trust of many of its users. One of the reddit thread even reflected the same. A courtesy email would have helped most of them and this has shook the entire crypto community. Binance CEO (Changpeng Zhao (Chinese: 赵长鹏) ) tweeted on May 7th about unscheduled maintenance but no other information was sent to its users on this issue.
Have to perform some unscheduled server maintenance that will impact deposits and withdrawals for a couple hours. No need to FUD. Funds are #safu.
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) May 7, 2019
The Real Question :
Binance has been one of the most trusted exchanges around the world in the crypto community but this incident of holding users crypto locked raises a question, how one exchange can control crypto users activities by disabling all of its deposits and withdrawal.
Its important for crypto companies such as Binance to communicate clearly to its users when such major decisions are taken which impacts the entire crypto community.
Impact on Crypto Community:
Its understandable and very important to investigate these security issues ( proven if its a true hack) so that other users are impacted but not at the cost of locking users crypto currency. If this incident happens to be major financial exchanges then this would be a federal issue. The ultimate goal here is for companies like Binance to take responsibility and ensure such hacks not impacting the normal users.
The current cryptocurrency market is nearing 200$ billion as of this week but this incident definitely raises a question about the concept of decentralization or when will true decentralization happen in the crypto world. Also how the entire crypto market can suffer when such security hacks can bring the entire crypto exchanges like Binance to its knees.