Binance recently announced the delisting of 5 cryptocurrencies; Substratum, Cloak, SALT, Wings, and Modum. Trading will be ceased on 2019/02/22 at 10:00 AM UTC.
Binance is one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges. That is also why more or less all crypto-projects want to be listed on the exchange. Being listed on Binance will often result in a decent price surge, however, when projects get delisted, it is the other way around. The price of Substratum went from 4.3 cents to 2.2 cents after the announcement and the other projects have seen similar price reductions.
The announcement from Binance says:
“At Binance, we periodically review each digital asset we list to ensure that it continues to meet the high level of standard we expect. When a coin or token no longer meets this standard, or the industry changes, we conduct a more in-depth review and potentially delist it. We believe this best protects all of our users.”
Below is a list of Binance’s requirements:
- Commitment of team to project
- Level and quality of development activity
- Network / smart contract stability
- Level of public communication
- Responsiveness to our periodic due diligence requests
- Evidence of unethical / fraudulent conduct
- Contribution to a healthy and sustainable crypto ecosystem”
We have been in touch with Cloak and Wings. When asked if they were aware of the situation before being delisted, they replied:
Wings
“No, it was a complete surprise for us, there was no prior contact from Binance on this matter. We have reached out to Binance for further clarification, yet have received no explanation up to this moment. We will continue to work even harder to implement the Wings vision; in parallel, we are also exploring some new ways to bring additional value to the Wings ecosystem; more on that later.” said Aleksandr, Community manager.
Cloak
“We were not aware of the delisting and have not been informed about it, too. It is always important for us to strengthen the relationship and therefore we attended at the Binance Event in Singapore. Even 24 hours after the official delisting announcement we are waiting for answers from Binance?” Sidi25, head of PR & Marketing, wrote to us. Adding:
“We are currently conducting several tests to ensure the code’s current & expanded security standards and improving the current proof-of-stake algorithm. The development team has reported a first success to the new Bitcoin Codebase. The design of the wallet will be renewed in addition to new features. All this will be released with the new CloakCoin Enigma Wallet Release. The development of the dev-fund is still in progress.”
We have also been in touch with Modum, but they did not want to comment on the matter. They did, however, write this in their telegram group earlier:
“Update regarding Binance’s delisting of MOD: Binance announced this morning that by February 22, 2019 MOD will no longer be listed on their exchange. We were given no prior notice about this decision and have not received a satisfactory reasoning from Binance yet. We will update the community as early as possible next week.
The potential delisting from Binance does not affect the listings on other exchanges (e.g. Mercatox, LATOKEN, Nebula and others).”
We have not been able to get in touch with Substratum yet, but Substratum tweeted this earlier:
Substratum became aware of our Binance delisting Feb 15. We have reached out to Binance for explanation. As soon as we have more information we will make it available. Development of Substratum continues and we are moving forward with monetization, security, and usability.
— Substratum (@SubstratumNet) February 15, 2019
And last but not least, SALT. We also reached out to SALT and they were quite surprised as well:
“We are unclear as to why SALT Membership Units are being delisted from the Binance asset exchange. SALT did not receive notice in advance and Binance has not responded to our request for information regarding the reason behind the delisting.”
When asked if they were aware of the situation before being delisted, Kendra said:
“No. Binance’s announcement and action came as a surprise to SALT, as we did not receive any information requests or an opportunity to refute the inferences in Binance’s announcement. Over the course of the next three months, we will continue to expand our accepted collateral types and lendable jurisdictions to better serve our loan customers, and will remain focused on marketing our new Technology Solutions. We will also continue to drive awareness and adoption of blockchain technology through participation in community conferences, meetups, and events throughout the year.”
Is Binance handling this the wrong way?
One thing all the statements have in common is the fact that Binance did not give them any notice prior to the delisting announcement. Is this wrong? Why didn’t Binance give the projects a heads-up before delisting them? It seems like none of them were aware of the situation and therefore didn’t know they had to improve or adjust in order to meet Binance’s standards. Personally, I think Binance could do a better job communicating with the projects and make sure delistings like these do not come as a surprise. I’m sure Binance didn’t mean to harm anyone, however, they must have been aware of the effect such delistings will have for the cryptocurrencies. Not letting them prepare for such drastic changes does not seem fair to me.
What do you think? Let me know below!
This could be why SALT and Substratum were delisted from Binance
Substratum
Following their ICO, there were discrepancies in the ICO funds collected according to Brian Li. Li also suggested that a large sum in tokens consisting of 2.5 BTC, 702 BCH, 1142 ETH, and 35 LTC were missing from the ICO funds. Justin Tabb, Substratum CEO, also admitted to using the funds from the ICO in his trades.
SALT
In February 2018, the SEC subpoenaed SALT for allegedly distributing securities tokens to insiders and seeking information on the $50 million it raised in its ICO.
SALT also suffered a drastic reduction in price when it went from $18 to a low of $1 which forced SALT to remove the option of paying principal to the loans using SALT tokens.
If this is true Binance is doing more damage than good to the ecosystem; Instead of guiding these projects and express expectations (or dissapointment) and pushing teams towards exceling and improving themselves, the strike them with a knife in the back by making such announcements; these projects will have a even harder time to get back on their feet and actually deliver what they promissed;
Very poor practice from Binance