Binance to temporarily suspend bank transfers in US dollars beginning Feb. 8
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Binance has announced the temporary suspension of USD bank transfers starting on February 8th. This will not affect any other trading methods on the platform. The announcement was made via a tweet on February 6th.
The reason for the suspension has not been provided. Binance, being the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, stated in the same tweet that:
“We are working hard to restart the service as soon as possible. […] All other methods of buying and selling crypto remain unaffected.”
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said in a separate tweet:
“It is worth noting that USD bank transfers are leveraged by only 0.01% of our monthly active users. However, we appreciate that this is still a bad user experience.”
It has been noted that the suspension will only impact international Binance users, as Binance.US has confirmed that their customers will not be affected by this change.
https://t.co/gM6e3xb9BX is not affected by this suspension. Unless you see an official message from https://t.co/gM6e3xb9BX, our customers will not be affected.
— Binance.US Customer Support (@BinanceUShelp) February 6, 2023
Binance has encountered recent banking difficulties in the United States. On January 21st, 2023, its SWIFT transfer partner, Signature Bank, announced that as of February 1st, 2023, it would only handle trades from users with USD bank accounts exceeding $100,000. Previously, the bank stated that it would significantly decrease deposits from cryptocurrency clients.
Binance announced that they were looking for a new SWIFT partner in light of the situation. They confirmed that trades utilizing USD through credit or debit cards would still be processed, as well as all SWIFT transactions using other currencies.
On February 1st, 2023, Binance published a list of 144 nations where all USD SWIFT transfers, regardless of size, would be temporarily suspended.
According to CNBC, with information from Arkham Intelligence, there was a sudden transfer of Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) stablecoins tied to the dollar to other exchanges. The report notes that the outflow was “minimal” compared to Binance’s total of $42.2 billion in cryptocurrency assets.
