Binance has issued an update clarifying that several altcoins on its exchange did not actually crash to zero during Friday’s crypto market turmoil. The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange confirmed that a “display issue,” not an actual price collapse, caused certain tokens — including IoTeX (IOTX), Cosmos (ATOM), and Enjin (ENJ) — to appear as if they had fallen to $0.
According to Binance’s announcement, “Certain trading pairs, such as IOTX/USDT, recently reduced the number of decimal places allowed for minimum price movement, causing the displayed prices in the user interface to be zero.” The exchange emphasized that this was purely a visual glitch and that trading activity was not affected.
The incident came amid one of the most dramatic sell-offs in crypto history, which wiped out up to $20 billion in leveraged positions within 24 hours — marking the largest liquidation event ever recorded. This sparked widespread panic, with traders initially believing that Binance had suffered a catastrophic failure.
Adding to the speculation, some analysts suggested that Binance may have been the target of a coordinated exploit. Crypto trader ElonTrades theorized that attackers took advantage of Binance’s “Unified Account” system, which relies on internal oracle data. The exploit allegedly caused massive price discrepancies, particularly impacting Ethena’s synthetic dollar (USDe), which briefly depegged to $0.65.
Binance has since announced $283 million in compensation for users affected by the event, while also confirming plans to shift to external oracle data sources by October 14. Despite the company’s reassurances, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek has called for regulatory reviews of centralized exchanges involved in the crash.
