A major cryptocurrency exchange has temporarily stopped accepting stablecoin withdrawals. Binance says that transactions with the USDC token, which is tied to the dollar, have been “temporarily” halted.
Binance, which has the most trades of any cryptocurrency exchange in the world, said on Tuesday that it was stopping withdrawals of the stablecoin USDC. The collapse of the FTX exchange has caused a lot of money to leave the platform, according to news reports.
The move is said to be because investors are getting more worried about Binance’s stability after rival exchange FTX went bankrupt and is being investigated in the US for misusing investor funds.
Binance said that the “temporary pause” on USDC withdrawals was because of a “token swap,” which means exchanging one cryptocurrency for another.
Stablecoin is what people call the cryptocurrency USDC because it has the same value as the US dollar. Investors use it to buy and sell different types of cryptocurrency without having to move money back into dollars.
“Withdrawals have gone up on USDC,” Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao said in a tweet around 8:20 GMT on Tuesday.
Zhao says that you need to use real dollars at a bank in New York to trade USDC for two other crypto tokens, Paxos Standard and Binance USD. “The banks won’t be open for a while.” “We think things will get back to normal when the banks open,” he wrote.
The CEO said that users can still withdraw other stablecoins like BUSD and tether.
