Binance Closes Customer Accounts After Complaining About Alleged Theft of Funds on Twitter

Binance CEO Changpeng CZ Zhao doesn't want to serve clients who don't make sense. (photo: twitter @cz_binance)

JAKARTA - Crypto exchange Binance closed a faulty customer's account on December 9 after the user complained about the exchange's response to the alleged theft of funds. Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said the company does not want to serve “unreasonable” clients.

A user going by the name CoinMamba on Twitter started complaining about missing funds on December 8th. It claims that leaked API keys linked to crypto trading firm 3Commas were used “to trade low cap coins to drive up prices to make profits .”

Have talked to Binance support and so far they are refusing to do anything to help me with the situation, saying that is my fault. Not sure how the API was leaked, and whose fault is this.

— CoinMamba (@coinmamba) December 8, 2022

The trader claimed in a series of tweets that Binance was unable to provide him with appropriate support.

The Binance CEO also took to Twitter on December 9 to clarify the situation.

Mamba, there is almost no way for us to be sure users didn’t steal their own API keys. The trades were done using API keys you created. Otherwise we will just be paying for users to lose their API keys. Hope you understand.

— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) December 9, 2022

As users continue to complain on the social media platform, CZ acknowledged in another tweet to consider putting users' accounts "in off boarding mode (withdrawals only)," claiming "we don't want to serve unreasonable people." The tweet was later deleted but is still available as a screenshot in the thread. The user's account is then closed, with three days to withdraw the funds.

According to a user tweet, 3Commas denies any exploitation of its protocol and database and, therefore, is not responsible for stolen API keys. "Based on the information we have today, we have found that no encryption protocols were found to be compromised and no 3Commas account security database breaches occurred," said 3Commas support.

Another Twitter user also raised the issue of the alleged API hacker, asking Binance to stop the withdrawal and investigate the incident.

On November 13, the CEO of Binance confirmed that at least three users faced unexpected transactions on their accounts after sharing their API Keys with third-party platforms Skyrex and 3Commas. He then recommends users delete the associated API key.

Coinmamba claims to have been a client of Binance for over five years, and he is still opening futures positions on the platform.