So, Binance broke. Again. And now they’re trotting out the co-founder and the new CEO to deliver a masterclass in corporate apologies, complete with scripted lines about "taking responsibility" and having "no excuses."
Give me a break.
You can practically hear the PR team high-fiving in a Zoom call. Yi He, the co-founder, hits X with a somber post about how "when we fall short, we take responsibility." The new guy, Richard Teng, follows up with his own version of the same script: "I'm truly sorry... We don't make excuses."
It’s a beautiful performance. The only problem is that the entire apology tour is, itself, an excuse. The reason for the meltdown? "Recent price volatility" and a "substantial influx of users." Let me translate that for you: the crypto market did what the crypto market does, and the world’s largest exchange couldn't handle it. Isn't handling a "substantial influx of users" during "price volatility" the entire point of a crypto exchange? That's like the fire department issuing a press release saying they're sorry the town burned down, but they were caught off guard by a "substantial influx of fire." It’s the one job you had.
This is just bad risk management. No, 'bad' isn't the word—it's a complete abdication of their core function. They want you to believe this was some unpredictable, black swan event. It wasn’t. It was a Friday night in crypto.
The Art of the Surgical Payout
Let's talk about the "compensation," because this is where the corporate genius really shines. Binance isn't just throwing money at everyone who got wrecked. Offcourse not. They’re being very, very specific.
The official statement, headlined by The Block as Binance to compensate some users after several markets depeg: 'There are no excuses', is a work of art in CYA legalese. Compensation is for users who held USDe, BNSOL, and WBETH as collateral and got liquidated during a very precise 40-minute window on Friday night. Forty minutes. From 21:36 to 22:16 UTC. If your account got vaporized at 21:35 because the platform was already lagging and unresponsive? Tough luck. If the cascading chaos got you at 22:17? You’re out of the club.
This is like a casino offering to refund you for a single, provably rigged hand of blackjack, while completely ignoring the fact that their card-shuffling machines were sparking and smoking for an hour beforehand, causing chaos across the entire floor. They’ve isolated the one moment they absolutely cannot deny was their fault and are trying to make it look like a grand gesture of goodwill. What about the people who tried to close positions but couldn't because the platform was a mess? What about the ones who saw the depegs and tried to get out, only to be met with spinning wheels and error messages?
And the best part? Yi He clarifies that "losses resulting from market fluctuations and unrealized profits are not eligible for compensation." So, if their platform failure prevented you from making a profitable trade, that’s just the cost of doing business. Your business, not theirs. It's a classic heads-I-win, tails-you-lose scenario, gift-wrapped in a public apology. It drives me crazy how these tech giants build systems on foundations of sand and then act shocked when they crumble under the slightest pressure. It's like my ISP, which guarantees 99.9% uptime until a light drizzle starts, and then it’s suddenly an "act of God."
A $20 Billion Mess No One Wants to Clean
While Binance was busy crafting the perfect non-apology, the rest of the market was a bloodbath. We're talking nearly $20 billion in liquidations across the board in 24 hours. A historic wipeout affecting almost two million traders. Binance wasn't even the worst offender in terms of liquidation volume—that trophy goes to Hyperliquid and Bybit—but they are the biggest name with the biggest target on their back.
You know things are bad when a rival CEO starts calling for the regulators. Crypto.com’s chief, Kris Marszalek, basically tagged the SEC, saying regulators should "conduct a thorough review of fairness of practices" at the exchanges with the most liquidations. This ain't just industry competition; it's a shark smelling blood in the water. Marszalek knows that when a platform of Binance’s size stumbles this badly, it hurts everyone. It spooks investors, invites government crackdowns, and reinforces every stereotype about crypto being a lawless digital casino.
And Binance’s response is to pay out a select few traders for a 40-minute window and promise to "do better." They want you to see them as the responsible adult in the room, but honestly... their platform just failed its most basic stress test, and their solution is a calculated, surgically precise refund designed to quell the loudest complainers. Is anyone actually buying this? Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one here for expecting anything more.
So, We're Good Now?
Let's be brutally honest. This compensation plan isn't about "taking responsibility." It's a damage control budget line item. It's the absolute minimum amount of money Binance can spend to prevent a class-action lawsuit and stop a full-blown bank run. They're not sorry they failed; they're sorry they got caught. The apologies, the carefully worded statements, the targeted refunds—it's all just business. The real message isn't "we'll do better." It's "please don't leave, and for God's sake, please don't sue."
