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“Binance Stop Scamming,” Nigerians accuse exchange of arbitrary account blocking

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29
Jan

Image courtesy of Binance Twitter page

  • Nigerian traders accuse Binance of blocking their accounts for no good reason and restricting their access to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
  • Binance denies the accusations, saying that it only blocks at the request of law enforcement agencies or to protect users’ funds.

Nigerian cryptocurrency traders aren’t happy at the world’s largest exchange Binance. A sizable number accuse Binance of arbitrarily locking them out of their accounts, sometimes for months, without giving any proper reason to do so. They are calling on fellow traders in Africa’s largest economy, and the region at large, to boycott the exchange.

Nigeria is home to Africa’s biggest crypto trading community. According to the Chainalysis Global Crypto Adoption Index 2020, the country ranked 8th globally for adoption, and despite ranking below Kenya and South Africa on this metric, it still has the largest number of Bitcoin owners in the region. On Paxful, a Bitcoin P2P trading platform, Nigeria is the biggest market with 1.5 million traders, ranking ahead of the U.S.

Nigerian traders are, however, raising concern over Binance. Under the hashtag #Binancestopscamming, the traders took to Twitter to reveal that their accounts were getting shut down for no apparent reason.

One user, Cynthia Chidera, wrote:

Binance has been unjustly disabling Nigerians accounts with lots of funds inside, in some cases you’ll be told NYPD or FBI is in charge of the case, but when you contact them, they’ll tell you they have nothing to do with that, in some cases, they won’t respond.

These account suspensions are proving to be fatal in some cases, with those who are denied access to their funds taking their own lives, Cynthia revealed.

“It’s been 10 months now that Binance held my hard-earned crypto, I have reached out to customer care severally, till now I have not been given any tangible reason for this act,” another user, Amy Judy, bemoaned.

Yet another user accused Binance of outright robbery, stating, “This morning I tried logging in to my @binance account and I noticed my account has been disabled with my hard-earned crypto in it, disabled with no prior notification. Is this not robbery.”

For some, it’s been close to a year since the exchange denied them access to their funds.

Binance denies wrongdoing but says it has the right to freeze accounts

Most Nigerian traders who reached out to Binance over the suspension of their accounts didn’t get any response from the Changpeng “CZ” Zhao-led exchange. For those that did, it was disheartening, with the exchange reminding them that it has every right to do just that.

One user revealed the response on social media.

We would like to take the opportunity to remind you that by accessing Binance Services, you agree that Binance has the right to freeze your account without your consent or prior notice as per the Terms of Use.

For some, Binance let them know that their account had been blocked permanently, and if they continued asking around on why they risked being shut out completely even by the customer service.

Binance Africa denied the accusations, stating:

At times, we proactively restrict accounts to protect users’ funds. Other times, we have to restrict accounts at the request of law enforcement. But never will we restrict accounts without good reason.

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