Binance will compensate a subset of users who lost funds during Friday night’s wild crypto swings, after platform slowdowns coincided with sharp token depegs and one of the largest liquidation events in the industry’s history.
In posts on X, Binance’s chief customer support officer and co‑founder Yi He and CEO Richard Teng issued public apologies on Saturday, acknowledging the exchange’s technical issues during the surge in trading activity. He said users who suffered direct losses because of Binance’s performance could apply for compensation, though losses tied to market price changes or unrealized profits would not qualify.
“If you have incurred losses attributable to Binance, please contact our customer service to register your case,” Yi He wrote. “We will review your account activity individually… When we fall short, we take responsibility—there are no excuses or justifications.”
According to Binance’s follow‑up announcement, compensation will cover Futures, Margin, and Loan users who held USDe, BNSOL, and WBETH as collateral and were impacted between 21:36 and 22:16 UTC on Oct. 10. The exchange said payouts would equal the difference between each asset’s liquidation price and its market price two hours later, at midnight UTC.
All three assets — Ethena’s USDe, Binance’s Solana liquid staking token BNSOL, and Wrapped Beacon ETH (WBETH) — broke sharply from their intended pegs during the sell‑off. USDe, designed to remain near $1, briefly crashed to $0.66, prompting a wave of forced liquidations across leveraged positions.
Teng, who succeeded Changpeng “CZ” Zhao as CEO in 2023, echoed He’s apology, saying the company “doesn’t make excuses” and would “learn from what happened.”
Yi He later added that users who bought the depegged assets at discounted prices would keep their gains, while wealth management clients affected by the same tokens would be handled through a separate process.
The meltdown capped a brutal 24 hours for traders. Data from Coinglass show that roughly 1.7 million positions were liquidated across the crypto market, erasing nearly $20 billion in open interest — a scale some traders described as “historic.” Binance ranked third among exchanges by liquidation volume, with about $1.4 billion in long positions and $981 million in shorts wiped out.
Despite that scale, Binance’s share of long‑side liquidations — around 59 % — was smaller than that of rivals, which saw up to 85 % of liquidations hit bullish traders.
Amid the turmoil, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek called for regulators to examine whether exchanges handled the episode fairly.
“Regulators should look into the exchanges that had most liquidations in the last 24h and conduct a thorough review of fairness of practices,” Marszalek posted on X. “$20B in liquidations — a lot of users got hurt.”
Binance’s own token, BNB, slid nearly 10 % in the aftermath, trading around $545 early Saturday. Despite the drop, BNB recently overtook XRP to become the third‑largest non‑stablecoin cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
The exchange has faced mounting scrutiny in recent years as it balances global regulatory pressure with efforts to maintain liquidity and reliability during high‑volatility stretches. Friday’s disruptions mark the most serious technical setback since Teng took over the top role.
For now, Binance says it will handle compensation case by case, hoping to calm the backlash from traders who saw positions vanish in minutes. Whether that will be enough to restore confidence after one of crypto’s biggest liquidation cascades remains an open question.