Binance.US Pauses OTC Trading, Culls Dozens of USDT Trading Pairs
Binance.US has indefinitely suspended its over the counter trading platform following an SEC lawsuit into its global counterpart Binance, which has rocked the crypto world over the past three days.
The announcement came roughly three hours ago via a blog post on the Binance.US site. In it, the exchange told customers that it will notify them “if and when OTC trading becomes available again” in the coming weeks and months.
Deposits and withdrawals remain available, the blog post noted.
It’s important to note that shutting down OTC trading still means retail customers will have the ability to trade on the public exchange. OTC trading refers to instances where people are matched directly with buyers, and typically has the advantage of more liquidity. It’s usually reserved for institutional clients.
Other prominent US crypto exchanges including Kraken and Coinbase also maintain OTC desks, though neither — particularly Coinbase, a company facing a similar SEC crackdown to Binance — have shut down their OTC services.
Binance.US also told customers that dozens of USDT trading pairs will be delisted from its advanced trading platform Thursday at 12 pm ET.
Some notable UDST pair removals including AAVE, MKR, MANA, and SUSHI, all of which are down more than 5% in the last 24 hours.
The advanced trading interface lets Binance.US users select which trading pair they’d like to use, and the feature is available to all users who have passed the basic verification process.
According to an April post, there were 280+ trading pairs. With its latest rash of delistings, Binance.US has reduced that to 226.
Several bitcoin (BTC) and BUSD trading pairs were removed as well, but all USD trading pairs remain.
Binance’s BNB has tanked 8.5% over the past 24 hours and 15% over the past week.
Blockworks reached out to Binance.US but did not receive an immediate response.
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