Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency Exchange by volume, briefly halted all trading following reports of irregular transactions of the SYS coin.
The incident began at roughly 21:00 UTC on Tuesday, July 3, the Syscoin network tweeted that a potential issue had been identified within its system and called on exchanges to suspend trading of its token.
We are investigating a possible issue on the Syscoin Blockchain , nothing is confirmed but we have asked for exchanges to halt trading while we investigate.
— Syscoin (@syscoin) July 3, 2018
Hours later, the problem was confirmed in a second tweet: “we observed odd trading behavior coupled with atypical blockchain activity.” However, the network said that “after investigating the #Syscoin blockchain is safe,” and that they had asked exchanges to resume trading. Syscoin promised that they would deliver a “detailed Wiki post tomorrow.”
The Wiki post has not yet arrived, but Binance posted an Incident Recap outlining exactly what happened, declaring that “all funds are safe.”
Binance also announced that it has “removed all existing API keys and requested all API users to recreate their API keys,” and that users who were negatively affected by the events will receive zero-fee trading; all other Binance users will receive “70% rebate on the trading fees received from you (does not include referrals) between 2018/07/05 - 2018/07/14.”
#Binance Incident Recap on Irregular SYS Trading All funds are safe #SAFUhttps://t.co/PUVRln3gIg pic.twitter.com/CeadTTGvFt
— Binance (@binance) July 4, 2018
'Unusual' Activity
Here’s what happened: apparently, 24-hour price data from Binance showed that at one point, SYS tokens were trading for 96 BTC (approximately $626,000) apiece; their estimated worth off of Binance was roughly 0.00004 BTC ($0.26) each.
Syscoin co-founder Sebastien DiMichele confirmed the wild explosion in price, telling CoinDesk that his "understanding is that yes, Syscoin was sold for 96 BTC per unit at one point today. We saw massive bot activity, our community let us know that they were having trouble with deposits at Binance."
The exchange halted all trading, and tweeted out that it was undergoing ‘system maintenance’ at approximately 0.00 UTC on Wednesday, July 4; seven hours later, the maintenance was reported as completed.
The real price of syscoin saw a boost in the wake of the incident--the coin briefly surged around 100 percent to roughly $0.50, but quickly receded to $0.25.
