Bitcoin Trades at Narrow Discount on Binance.US
News of a possible halt in U.S. dollar withdrawals sparked an increase in bitcoin trading as customers looked to remove their assets from the exchange, one observer said.
Jun 9, 2023 at 12:00 p.m. UTC
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Bitcoin (BTC) was priced at a slight discount on Binance.US early Friday after the exchange said it would become a crypto-only platform starting June 13.
At 08:25 UTC, the bitcoin-U.S. dollar pair on Binance.US traded at least $130 below prices on Coinbase and other major exchanges, according to data tracked by the charting platform TradingView.
"BTC now trades at a slight discount on Binance.US," said Clara Medalie, a director at Paris-based crypto data provider Kaiko. "News of a possible halt in USD withdrawals has caused an uptick in BTC selling as traders quickly try to get their assets off the exchange,"
Binance.US tweeted late Thursday that it would no longer accept dollar deposits and warned that its banking partners are preparing to pause fiat withdrawal channels as of June 13. The exchange urged clients to reclaim their dollars using bank transfers before then, and said it would begin delisting the dollar-denominated pairs starting next week.
The decision comes days after the U.S. Securities Exchange and Commission (SEC) asked a federal court to freeze Binance.US' assets, while suing its global entity Binance and rival exchange Coinbase for violating the federal securities law.
The SEC's action saw market makers remove liquidity from Binance.US' order books. The resulting worsening of the market depth saw bitcoin trade at a premium of more than $1,000 on the exchange at one point.
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Omkar Godbole is a Co-Managing Editor on CoinDesk's Markets team.