(Bloomberg) -- Binance, one of the biggest cryptocurrency marketplaces by volume, was trying to calm angry customers who claimed their digital coins were sold without their permission.
“All funds are safe,” wrote Zhao Changpeng, chief executive officer of Asia-based Binance, in a tweet on Wednesday. “There were irregularities in trading activity, automatic alarms triggered. Some accounts may have been compromised by phishing from before. We are still investigating.”
He then sent a second tweet: “We have localized the irregular trades, they will be reversed. All funds are safe, thanks to the fast alarm.”
The firm later said there had been “a large scale phishing and stealing attempt” over a two-minute period and that some trades related to the attack could not be reversed. It didn't provide further details.
Traders had earlier appeared to be in panic mode, taking to Reddit, Twitter and the chat app Telegram in search of help. In the “Binance English” Telegram group, which has nearly 65,000 members, some said they'd lost thousands of dollars. Many were worried the trading platform was hacked, while others expressed frustration because Binance halted its withdrawal feature to investigate the incident.
“I lost everything,” a user named Joey Raye said in a message. “If Binance do not reimburse I am ruined.”
Another person said their account was almost completely emptied when someone got access to it and sold $92,000 worth of their crypto for Bitcoin, used that Bitcoin to buy a token called Viacoin, and then withdrew the Viacoin. Three people told Bloomberg News that their accounts were used to purchase Viacoin without their permission.
Viacoin is the 151st-biggest cryptocurrency, according to Coinmarketcap.com. Its price surged 24 percent in the past day, giving the token a total market value of about $70 million. Binance said on Feb. 4 that it was listing Viacoin on its marketplace.
Last month Binance missed several deadlines it had set to reopen after a system upgrade, spurring an online backlash from users who had been cut off from trading and withdrawals for more than 35 hours. There was speculation at the time that Binance had been hacked. Zhao said the rumors weren't true.
--With assistance from Camila Russo and Justina Lee
To contact the reporters on this story: Lily Katz in New York at lkatz31@bloomberg.net, Benjamin Robertson in Hong Kong at brobertson29@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Arie Shapira at ashapira3@bloomberg.net, Jeremy Herron at jherron8@bloomberg.net, Dave Liedtka, Sam Mamudi
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.
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