[2018-01-08] Binance, Bitfinex, Bittrex Temporarily Say No to New Users

[cybersofts]

Binance, Bitfinex, Bittrex Temporarily Say No to New Users



With the surging price of cryptocurrencies, demand has reached the point where cryptocurrency exchanges are completely swamped. This massive influx of users has led to major infrastructure concerns leading to the temporary closure of their registration portals.

Throughout the last half of 2017, digital currency exchanges have posted record numbers of user signup. Binance is reporting the addition of 250,000 users per day while Coinbase has reported numerous days of 100,000+ user signups and Kraken boasts of 50,000 new users per day.


Halt

The incredible swelling of cryptocurrency users is overwhelming the infrastructure of many cryptocurrency exchanges, with some such as Kraken experiencing major usability problems throughout 2017. The exchange has responded by disabling some of its advanced order types, reducing price precision and initiating a major system overhaul.

Bittrex is one of the first exchange platforms that put a halt on onboarding new users. Back in December 2017, an alert from this US-based exchange reads:

    “We have received an enormous number of new account registrations over the past few weeks.”

In addition to Bittrex, two other platforms had to make a similar decision – Bitfinex and Binance. New signups to Bitfinex will be welcomed by a window stating that new account creation has been paused.

Part of the message reads:

    “Thank you for your interest in opening a Bitfinex account. However, due to extraordinary demand, new account creation has been temporarily paused.

    Bitfinex focuses on serving professional traders. The reason we have decided to temporarily stop accepting new accounts is that we cannot undermine the quality of our services for our existing traders by flooding the system with new, small accounts.”

Binance has also had to halt registrations while undergoing an infrastructure update. While Bittrex and Binance have not given a timeline for reopening new account registrations, Bitfinex intends to allow signups starting January 15, 2018.


Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-bitfinex-bittrex-temporarily-say-no-to-new-users

[Zicadis]

This is some good news which tells the outside world still stuck with fiat that the crypto community is more than alive but then again if this situation of exchanges becoming full to the brim continues we just might have a problem of account selling which i hope wont be the case as their people already seeing this as a monetizing opportunity.

[richardsNY]

Good thing is that this sparks the local sellers, which allows them to ask pretty decent premiums for their coins. People however are complaining on social media that they can't enter due to all these registration blocks. Overall, I think this isn't the best solution, but then again, allowing people to register and have them wait weeks and weeks isn't an option either, so it's a fair mid way solution. I just hope it won't be something that stays active for months straight -- the exchanges in question should step up their game for once. The longer it takes for them to open registrations, the more this market misses out on fresh capital....

[bbc.reporter]

This is good and bad news. The good is at least we know that the exchanges care about their operation and what is left of the quality of their service to stop accommodating new users to serve the present ones better.

The bad news is this would limit the entry for newcomers.

[wilhb81]

Wow, luckily I've registered an account on all of the above three cryptocurrency exchange platforms. Maybe, the restriction is only for temporarily and they will reopen the registration for newcomers in near future...

[MadGamer]

It explains why I suddenly started to see threads in the digital goods section where people are selling these exchanges accounts for 50$. This should be a good reason to support P2P decentralized exchange and LN/Atomic swaps development.

[Ligareaux]

It explains why I suddenly started to see threads in the digital goods section where people are selling these exchanges accounts for 50$. This should be a good reason to support P2P decentralized exchange and LN/Atomic swaps development.

I like so much the idea! (LN/Atomic)


pd: who can risk to buy a "used" account?

[BitHodler]

Coinbase is going absolutely nuts with how they are growing. If you manage to reach numerous 100,000 signups and that in just a single day, it's obvious where the majority of the users flow into.

The only alarming point here is that Coinbase is growing so large, that they will have the influence they need to show their support for whatever proposal once they think it's a better way of moving forward.

That being said, I find it perfect that Bitfinex isn't accepting any new users, because less users signing up, means less users getting damaged in the long run when Bitfinex pulls another out another fake hack.

[jseverson]

It's crazy how crypto has boomed. It's rare for you to see services turn away customers because they can't handle the demand. And these are three different services of the same field, so you just know that the situation has already reached borderline ridiculous levels. The end of 2017 brought a massive wave of newcomers. Oh well, this forces exchanges to up their game if nothing else.

I find it a little ironic that services which offer uncensorable currencies are denying people the chance to take part of them though lol.

[akamit]

In my opinion stopping new registrations is not a solution for the exchanges.
I think by doing this, exchanges are blocking the rise of crypto world. Instead the exchanges should increase their capacity.

Cryptocurrency is just started to recognize by the world - it has a long way to go.

And this temporarily registration close thing, helped some users to sale accounts of those exchanges.
Some days ago I saw only one person selling account, but now there is dozens.

[iamTom123]

I think these are just birth pains of an industry which keeps on growing especially starting last year and am sure in the whole 2018. There is a need to expand, expand, expand and for all to scale, scale and scale. We have to be ready for the influx of new players in the industry. These are so-called as the happy problems.

[J. Cooper]

When I'm writing this binance has already re-enabled new registrations to their exchange but as of now that's the only exchange that has done that. Bittrex and co are still yet to start accepting new users again. I get they're a bit overwhelmed by the exponential growth cryptocurrency has had this year. It has been a blast. But I hope they will put their fee revenue to good use and upgrade their servers in order for them to support a larger quantity of users on their platforms.

[darkangel11]

Wow, luckily I've registered an account on all of the above three cryptocurrency exchange platforms. Maybe, the restriction is only for temporarily and they will reopen the registration for newcomers in near future...

It is temporary. Since exchanges have introduced the requirement for verification registration has become much slower. If we add the fact that exchanges are experiencing a huge surge in the number of new registrants, it's obvious that they won't be able to process it all. They prefer to take their time and do it thoroughly then having to deal with numerous tickets from people awaiting verification for more than a day.
Once they deal with all the new accounts and make sure their servers are able to handle traffic they will go back to registering new users.

[1Referee]

This ecosystem experienced a level of growth that usually should take two or three years, in just a single year, which explains the problems we are suffering from. That however doesn't mean that we should grant services in this market too much slack, because in some cases I have the impression that they use the high demand as excuse to cover up their own incompetence when it comes to running an exchange in a professional manner. That especially goes up for exchanges as Bittrex, which has been messing up big time in the last months with thousands and thousands of accounts being blocked. If you want to get your account active again, it takes longer than a month in some cases, and when you ask for status updates in the meantime, they even ignore you further.

[squatter]

FYI, Binance already re-enabled new user registrations by the time this article was published. Bitfinex and Bittrex still have registration disabled. So does Cryptopia.

In my opinion stopping new registrations is not a solution for the exchanges.
I think by doing this, exchanges are blocking the rise of crypto world. Instead the exchanges should increase their capacity.

They are trying, no doubt. What businesses do you know that were built to scale at this rate? Hundreds of thousands of new users a day?! This is exponential growth. No one was prepared for this, and it takes time to drastically increase engineering hires who can scale your platform safely.

I find it a little ironic that services which offer uncensorable currencies are denying people the chance to take part of them though lol.

What does closing registration have to do with censorship? Anyway, no cryptocurrency is uncensorable. At best, they are censorship-resistant.

[bbc.reporter]

Wow, luckily I've registered an account on all of the above three cryptocurrency exchange platforms. Maybe, the restriction is only for temporarily and they will reopen the registration for newcomers in near future...

I do not have Binance, and I have been avoiding Bitfinex since the hack. If there was an exchange that would Gox users again in the modern era of the cryptospace it would be Bitfinex.

[jseverson]

I find it a little ironic that services which offer uncensorable currencies are denying people the chance to take part of them though lol.

What does closing registration have to do with censorship? Anyway, no cryptocurrency is uncensorable. At best, they are censorship-resistant.

It could be construed as censorship of sorts. It could be a stretch, sure, but I was mostly saying it in jest. I mean, one of the selling points of crypto is that everyone can participate, right? Closing registration kind of goes against that.

I was mostly referring to Bitcoin, which is often described as uncensorable in part because of its uncensorable transactions, but I digress.