Major cryptocurrency exchange breaks down, Bitcoin rallies

The Binance system is expected to be back online in the coming hours.
bitcoin
The Bitcoin price was up US$1,000 on Thursday
Hong Kong based cryptocurrency exchange Binance added to the digital currency woes, with an outage sparking panic that there’d been a hack.
Binance denied it had been hacked, but, said that users were unable to trade or withdraw funds because of a system upgrade that had to be extended due to a “significant increase”
Zhao Changpeng, Binance chief executive, gave a more specific diagnose via Twitter.
The system is expected to be back online in the coming hours.
Binance is said to be one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, so a 12 hour shutdown being triggered by an unannounced software upgrade probably won’t help the growing cynicism over digital currency systems and regulation.
The Binance halt coincided with a rally in the Bitcoin price, which gained more than US$1,000 or 13.6% to trade at US$8,612.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Amazon and Microsoft Set to Make Millions From Blockchain

Image
Once just two percent of servers run on blockchain technology, Bank of America research analyst Kash Rangan predicts the market for blockchain technology will be worth $7 billion.  Nine companies have been identified as likely to benefit significantly from the technology including Amazon and Microsoft.  As reported by  CNBC , Rangan didn’t put a time stamp on his predictions but also included technology giants Oracle, IBM, Salesforce, and VMware as others set to benefit. “Many blockchain use cases have been identified, but full products/services have not yet been built out and are not used in production,” said Rangan. The analyst says that Amazon Web Services (AWS) will benefit “from incremental cloud services demand from blockchain implementation, while improved supply chain tracking should make Amazon’s retail operations more efficient.”  Rangan also predicts that blockchain will improve software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms and that blockchain-as-a-serv...
Read more

Malta-based cryptocurrency company probed in New York

Concerns about the lack of robust real-time and historical market surveillance capabilities A Malta-based cryptocurrency  exchange has been referred to the US department of financial services for potential violation of New York’s virtual currency regulations. The New York State Attorney General said Binance, Gate.io and Kraken had been referred to the US department for financial services after an investigation into whether those platforms accepted trade from within New York state. Binance, touted as the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, relocated to Malta earlier this year amid hype by the government. Malta’s embrace of blockchain technology led it to become a hub for cryptocurrency exchanges. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had welcomed Binance to Malta in a Tweet. As part of a study into the cryptocurrency market, the New York Attorney General sought the voluntary participation of 13 cryptocurrency exchanges in a fact-finding inquiry into the policies and practices o...
Read more

Soulja Boy's 'Bitcoin' Millions, PwC Backs a Stablecoin, Tether Sinks Below $1

PricewaterhouseCoopers, the top accounting firm better known as PwC, is backing a cryptocurrency—specifically, a so-called stablecoin backed by the U.S. dollar. The accounting firm is partnering with Cred, a decentralized lending startup that’s developing a new stablecoin pegged to the dollar, PwC announced Monday. PwC will offer its accounting expertise to ensure Cred’s dollar-backed coin “can provide 100% transparency and value substantiation,” the firm said in a statement. To hear PwC tell it, a lack of trust in stablecoins—and the existence of the dollar reserves backing them—has been keeping many potential investors out of cryptocurrency entirely. According to PwC, making the dollar reserves backing stablecoins fully auditable will “usher in the next 100 million users of crypto assets.” PwC is just the latest major firm to jump on the stablecoin bandwagon, joining  companies like IBM  and  venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz,  who see the coins as a di...
Read more