The Binance platform sent $20 million worth of crypto to users. Due to an error, the company confused two tokens belonging to the same project.
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, recently created an accounting error, our colleagues at CoinDesk report. Citing people close to the case, the specialized outlet reveals that the US branch of the exchange inadvertently sent $22 million in crypto assets to four clients.
Apparently, Binance has confused two cryptocurrencies linked to the same decentralized internet project: Helium. This project has two tokens, the HNT and the Mobile. Following a malfunction, the platform considered these two coins as a single token.
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Binance’s $20 million mistake
In fact, users received HNT tokens instead of mobile tokens. Binance sent 1 HNT per mobile token deposited by customers. A total of 4.8 million HNT tokens were credited to user accounts for no reason. However, these two cryptocurrencies do not have not at all the same value. HNT is currently worth over $4.50. For its part, Mobile is still priceless. The token was recently launched. Mobile token holders received unexpected millions of dollars in their Binance account.
Between August 23 and September 15, 2022, four wallets slowly and methodically deposited 4,829,043 MOBILE tokens to their US Binance deposit addresses.
Due to an error in the exchange’s systems, they were credited 1 HNT per deposited MOBILE token. 1 MOBILE was only worth <0.001 HNT. pic.twitter.com/5wtBHkzrpc
— Arman Dezfuli-Arjomandi 🎈 (@rawrmaan) September 18, 2022
As reported by Arman Dezfuli-Arjomandi, author of a podcast dedicated to the Helium project, it took 23 days for Binance to realize its mistake. Asked by CoinDesk, a Helium spokesperson explains:
” Binance informed the Helium Foundation late at night on September 15 that an accounting error related to HNT had occurred. We can confirm that this is not a blockchain issue and that this issue is isolated from Binance. To our knowledge, no other exchanges or third parties have been affected. We advise token holders to suspend HNT and MOBILE deposits on Binance until a full update on the situation is provided. “.
For their part, customers did not wait for Binance to understand their mistake. They quickly began to resell HNT tokens received through multiple platforms, including Binance.com. This massive scalping weighed on the price of the cryptocurrency, which would be trading around $7 at the time. The price briefly dipped back below $3.50 in the wake of the sell-off.
This is not the first time that an error of this type has affected the ecosystem. A few weeks ago we informed you the story of a Crypto.com user, another exchange platform. Due to human error, he perceived $10 million in your bank account. Before Crypto.com realized his mistake, he had bought a luxury home and spent much of his fortune.
CoinDesk