While everyone is excited about Bitcoin galloping to potentially another record high, some Binance users started the spring season off on the wrong foot.
If you’re a Binance user or exposed to the BNB token, don’t rush to move your funds or dump your BNB holdings while reading this – it’s not a big deal for now. Volume figures of the world’s largest crypto exchange are at the highest levels in a year, and it’s not affected by the following news.
But you have to know what happened:
Binance User Loses Funds on the Exchange
A Binance trader has reportedly lost about $70,000 following what seems to be a well-planned hacking attack.
He shared his disturbing incident via a thread on X (former Twitter if you like the previous name more).
Apparently, the hacker placed some orders and took some loans, which resulted in the user’s account being drained completely. The trader, who goes by the nickname “DoomXBT,” rushed to contact customer service, but their approach was terrible. The guy literally watched his account being depleted in real-time.
First, he noticed a list of strange orders that he hadn’t placed, like this:
All of his crypto holdings had been converted to BNB and then gradually disappeared.
When Doom contacted support, they failed to take urgent actions to stop the hacker but insisted on a video call to verify his identity, but the user didn’t even have a webcam at the time.
He then saw how his funds had been transferred to the hacker’s wallet and clicked on the “Spam” button in a desperate move to reverse the action but without any success. Meanwhile, customer support asked him to read some “stupid text” for the video call.
Long story short, upon their internal verification, Binance concluded that the withdrawal had been legit.
Since Doom’s thread got over 1 million views, the Binance CEO himself replied to it, apologizing for the situation and pledging to address this.
The news is becoming viral, so it remains to be seen how the exchange handles this.
Binance Removes Nigerian Naira from its P2P Platform
Meanwhile, Binance users from Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with 200+ million people, are frustrated after discovering that the crypto exchange had removed the local currency, Naira, from its peer-to-peer (P2P) market.
For those unfamiliar, Binance’s P2P service enables users to trade crypto without the involvement of a third party.
While Binance hasn’t released an official announcement, the delisting came amid claims by Nigerian authorities that crypto platforms have contributed to Naira’s devaluation. Nigeria is experiencing a skyrocketing inflation that surged almost 30% to the highest in 3 decades.
Previously, presidential adviser Bayo Onanuga said Binance had been contributing to the destruction of the Nigerian economy if not stopped, alleging arbitrary fixing of foreign exchange rates.
The Nigerian government is already taking drastic action. At the end of February, the Financial Times reported that two senior executives at Binance had been detained in Nigeria while the government was blocking access to crypto platforms.
Let’s closely monitor how Nigeria’s tough stance on crypto unfolds. According to the “2023 Geography of Cryptocurrency Report” by Chainalysis, Nigeria is positioned in the 2nd place globally in terms of adoption level. We will continue to provide you with further updates.
