Binance restored futures trading on Aug. 29 following a suspension tied to an issue in its USD-margined contracts.
Per Reuters, the exchange first said all of its $90 billion futures trading was “temporarily unavailable,” then about 24 minutes later said the problem affecting Futures UM, the stack that settles contracts in USDT or USDC, had been resolved and that all futures trading was fully operational.
In the follow-up note, Binance wrote, “The issue affecting Futures UM trading on Binance has been resolved,” adding that “all futures trading is now fully operational,” as reported by Reuters. The company did not disclose the root cause or provide additional technical details.
The sequence matters for derivatives participants who route hedges through USD-margined instruments. UM contracts use stablecoins for margin and settlement, while coin-margined contracts rely on the underlying asset, a design split that can confine faults to one margining domain when they arise.
Binance named UM in its restoration message, and did not mention coin-margined contracts in either alert, which frames the scope of the disruption without confirming whether other stacks were unaffected. Basic product distinctions are laid out in Binance’s USDⓈ-M and COIN-M contracts documentation.
Timestamps on the two Binance Futures X updates, 06:35 UTC for the suspension and 07:00 UTC for the all-clear, establish a concise public window for the incident. That interval does not necessarily capture the precise start or internal detection time, yet it sets a useful external marker for traders that monitor funding, order book depth, and liquidity across venues during service interruptions.
Binance’s public materials emphasize reliability. A recent engineering blog cited 99.98% overall API uptime for the first half of 2025, including a previously disclosed 45-minute episode affecting UM APIs during peak activity. Today’s communication did not reference that report, and the firm has not published metrics on user impact, such as forced liquidations or automatic deleveraging tied to the pause.
Interestingly, over the past 24 hours, Coinglass ranks Binance below Bybit for Exchange Liquidations. Due to its market share, Binance usually stands at the top of the liquidation chart, yet Bybit saw 10% more liquidations over the past day. Also, Binance saw a 10% greater short liquidation rate compared to the rest of the market.
For market structure, even a short futures halt at the largest venue can alter near-term liquidity routing, particularly around stablecoin-collateralized instruments that serve as baseline hedges for market makers and basis traders.
The lack of a stated cause leaves open technical possibilities, ranging from matching engine behavior to API layer constraints. The exchange provided no indication of data loss, order amendments, or the need for cancel-only periods, and the initial notices did not mention compensation mechanisms or insurance fund adjustments.
As of publication, Binance has only stated that futures trading is fully operational and that the UM issue is resolved.
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