Yesterday evening I made two transactions to Binance - the first arrived within minutes, the second one didn't. So I decided to go to bed and check again "tomorrow".
But this morning still nothing. And all the deposit and withdrawal buttons were disabled. Hm.
So I sent an email to support.
It was only after I hit SEND (and my first cup of coffee...) that it occurred to me to check Twitter and enter the hashtag #binance...
Sure enough, there were the big headlines: "$40m stolen from Binance!!!"
Thankfully, in between the headlines was also an announcement from Binance that none of us will be affected by this and the loss will be covered by them.
Phew! I didn't even have a chance to get worried :)
CZ, the CEO, also held a live AMA within a couple of hours after the announcement to answer questions of worried customers.
Situations like this build a company's reputation.
Mistakes, challenges and incidents will always happen - it's how you respond to them that matters. It's what you do afterwards - and how quickly - that defines your reputation and how your customers perceive you.
I have to say, Binance is doing very well in that regard. At least when it comes to being transparent and informing their customers of status updates.
Whether their customers will agree with the actions they'll take going forward, is another question (there's talk about a "rollback on the bitcoin network" - that doesn't sound OK to me at all.. )
Glad for now & learned a new word
I'm glad that my funds are safe and the only disadvantage I'm experiencing is that I can't buy the dip of some coins now (which is why I went to Binance in the first place yesterday).
I also finally learned what #SAFU means!
In short, it just means "safe". But the term is actually an abbreviation and stands for Binance's Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), which was installed in 2018 specifically for emergency cases like the above.
"10% of all trading fees received go into this fund, to offer protection to our users and their funds in extreme cases."
As things go in the crypto world, the hashtag #safu was quickly turned into a new slang phrase and instead of saying "funds are safe", we now say "funds are #safu".
There you go. A new word to add to our crypto glossaries :)
About the author:
Anja Schuetz helps absolute beginners to become confident crypto investors. She also consults as a Customer Communication & Operations Manager for blockchain start-ups.
Anja offers a Free Bitcoin Beginner's Course when you sign up to her Conscious Crypto Museletter here: http://anjaschuetz.net and has also written a Beginner's Guide to Steemit