Cryptocurrency exchange goes dark for 12 hours

Binance, One of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has caused panic amongst users by suspending trading and withdrawals for a 12-hour period.

The Hong Kong based exchange is the third largest in the world in terms of average daily volumes according to Coinmarketcap.

A Binance statement said: "Due to a significant increase in users and trading activity, Binance will need to extend the System upgrade and is expected to be completed by 2PM (UTC). Withdrawals and trading during this period will remain suspended. We apologize for any inconvenience caused and thank you for your patience."

Last month, Japanese Cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck lost £360m in a hacking incident and traders feared a similar fate had befallen Binance.

Zhao ChengPeng, CEO of Bincance, said: "We experienced a server issue on our replica database cluster, causing some data to be out of sync. Need to fully resync from master. Due the size of the data, it will take several hours. No data is lost. We appreciate your understanding and support."

Despite the reassurances many traders vented their frustrations at the unannounced outage on twitter, with user Dave Newcombe arguing "maintenance usually comes with a warning notification not with an apology letter."