Binance suspends USD transfers, citing issues with banks

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, will suspend all U.S. dollar deposits and withdrawals on its international exchanges starting Feb. 8, the company said in a U.S. Twitter post Monday, without giving a reason. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao stated in a separate Twitter post that this was caused by “some banks withdrawing support for crypto.”

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brief info

• “While some banks [are] After support for crypto was withdrawn, other banks are following suit. Some setbacks were expected from last year’s incidents,” Zhao said tweeted early Tuesday morning in Asia without defining what the incidents were.
• Last November, Binance’s competitor exchange FTX collapsed, and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried is now facing multiple charges of fraud and money laundering. The failure impacted the entire industry, with companies like Genesis Global Capital and BlockFi filing for bankruptcy and eroding trust.
• Last month, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued a joint statement to warn banks about the risks associated with crypto assets.
• Regulators wrote that issuing or holding crypto assets on a decentralized network is inconsistent with safe and sound banking practices, but added that organizations should not be discouraged from offering such services where permitted by law.
• Binance.US customers are not affected by the suspension, according to a tweet from Binance.US Customer Support.
• Binance itself operates all of its non-US exchanges in more than a hundred countries, including Canada, Australia, and France, according to its official website.
• Binance CEO added that while US dollar transfers are used by just 0.01% of the platform’s monthly active users, he acknowledges the inconvenience to customers and said the company is working to resolve the issue.
• Said Binance It aims to restart the service as soon as possible, but did not specify a date.
• (Updates to add warnings to banks in bullet points three and four.)

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Source: forkast.news