Topic: Binance & Nigerian; Most recent development on frozen funds without prior notice (Read 276 times)

Unfortunately, most of scammers use Nigeria as their country, they may not be in that country or its citizens, but because it is the most famous in Africa, they use it as country name.
also, press says that the trading volumes in that country are high, so the scammers will find a reasonable reason if you say thre are from Nigeria.


In general, it is wrong to generalize and describe an entire nation as a scam.

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Has the problem with Binance been resolved? Because I saw that they are running a promotional campaign in the previous African Nations Cup, and therefore their activity in Africa is increasing

Maybe the Nigeria you worked at or visited isn't in this planet, Maybe you were in the multiverse. No where is your money save in the bank, the scams happen all over the world and not just Nigerian. Sure there was a time it became a problem as majority were engaging themselves in fraudulent activities but that was many years back. The Nigerian in the cryptocurency space today aren't scammers but determined individuals that have taken it upon themselves to escape the prison called working for the government.

You don't justify punishing this guys because their forefathers committed a crime they know nothing of, I'm disappointed by your comment. This is just like me supporting some individuals that decide to enslave some white folks because their forefathers did the same to my people. Today it's Nigerian tomorrow it might be you or some other countries.


Binance has been active in Africa of recent in trying to expand so personal I didn't understand their decision to cause such discomfort in a market they're trying to conquer.  I don't think there's any development on this issue especially positive one.

"  That's an unrealistic number to be associated with fraud... " are you serious? It is not unrealistic at all, given that Nigeria has been seen as the scam capital of the World at some time. The "advance fee fraud" or "419 fraud" was rampant in the 1990's and a lot of old people has lost their Pension on these scams.

I have worked on contract in Nigeria and I can tell you from experience that your money is not safe in that country .... not even if you are Online. (The scammers has increased and it has just gotten worst)

Let the scammers be scammed..... get a taste of your own... but I do feel sorry for the innocent people that did not use those accounts for scams.  

Um.. not really...
Do you realize that the coins in the cex account are only entries in a database, associated with an account id?
Do you realize that after one deposited coins there, those coins can be spent (by cex) for other users' withdrawals, still his account id keeps track about his current amount of coins?
All the trades done by that account are also part of the same database, linked to the same account id.
So tracing the coins should be easy, no matter they are Bitcoin or USD pegged whatever.

If this preinformation was given, the essence of freezing their accounts would be defeated. If I was given such a privileged information, I would rather transfer my funds or sell to fiat that swapping to stable coin and be trapped till when I wouldn't ascertain.

I believe any account that is frozen cannot be tempered with. Even the support teams are not yet vindicated, if there be a crime, they should be the principal suspects. Again, swapping a coin under investigation to other coins may alter the flow of that coin and make it difficult to trace.

It wouldn't be if regulators are investigating bitcoin transactions linked to those people and to avoid complications, Binance officials will be mute and freeze the account until the whole investigation is done.

Well, if my theory is correct, then... unfortunately warrants don't come with a warning.


My experience tells that altcoins price move nicely only for very short periods of time. Speculating on them is very risky even without external unfortunate interventions.


Binance is losing money in all this. Their aim would have clearly been to leave people trade as much as possible, to give binance the trading fees. So I don't think that Binance wants to steal people's money.
Unfortunately they couldn't have asked people what to do, since then they would have been probably breaking the law. Also they could not take decisions on behalf of the users (about selling/exchanging).
Even worse, I am not convinced that those funds will be returned to the customers too soon (if ever).

It's a shitty situation and I can guess that many are devastated because many trade money they cannot really afford to lose. And I am very sorry for them.

My points were only two:

* There were discrete signs for who could read them; maybe 2 years ago Binance would have been stalling/ignoring governments' requests, but this is no longer an option due to their new direction.
   Also people did take unnecessary risks (without realizing that) and now they're in a very bad situation with no actual good solution

* I don't think that's Binance fault here


PS. Something that just came into my mind: did anyone try to ask Binance support to sell this and those coins for stable coins to avoid further loses? It could be (or it could have been) a possible course of actions.

Truth be told as we try to get more individual into the industry, there'll be people that there only interest will be to profit from the industry. This individual careless about the technicality of the industry and might be victim in the future. Obviously they have to be innocent victim among the accused. I trade P2P on a daily and knows the risk involved, some of the accused properly have no ideal about the stolen funds if that's the cause of the intervention and you can't blame them for not knowing.

Africa is known for its high interest in peer2peer transaction, obviously there'll be some scammers and fraudulent taking advantage of this that doesn't mean you go punishing the wrong individuals.


But were they given the room to trade their coins to stablecoin before the restrictions commence. Altcoins are unlikely to recover and we know the majority trade altcoins instead of Bitcoin. If they were given a warning excluding withdrawal from the exchange but atleast a chance to keep their coins in stable form because nobody knows how long the investigation will take and binance wouldn't have come out unless the campaign began on Twitter in the first place. You need to see the screenshots (although some might be edited) but you'll really see people devastated. 

There are many exchanges that are not supporting fiat but only bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, these are the exchanges that are not making kyc mandatory, it is normal for any exchange that deals with fiat to make kyc mandatory and be fully compliant with government regulatory bodies. Or, is their any exchange supporting fiat that do not make kyc mandatory?

As soon as binance started imposing the strict KYC requirements. I had a feeling it was another Bittrex in making, so I moved most of my trading funds out of the exchange. With all the signals they have given to go fully compliant. It means they will freeze people's funds at any time any law enforcement agency requests.

I am not sure about  Nigeria vs. Binance case, but I remember two years ago my country is also suspended on Binance and Kucoin due to some government law and potential economic sanctions against my country. it lasted a couple of months and in that time I had full access to my funds on Binance but only what I can do is withdraw it from there.
it is also interesting when I provided the document which corrects the error and where certain prohibitions against my state are lifted, they unsuspend my account till the next 24h. (The same thing happened with Kucoin.)

Some people are using centralized exchanges but they fraudsters, just that they do not know how centralized exchanges are designed. Some of them do not even know what private key is, not to talk of seed phrase. I have interacted with many fellow Nigerian friends, I am pretty sure that almost 70% or more (I guess) of Nigerians do not know the technical aspects of bitct and other cryptocurrencies, only few of us know it.

If the funds of some good people are also freezed, it is not their key, it is not their coin on blockchain, it is Binance that owns the coins on blockchain and they can overide any customers control which will lead to freezing of blocking of users account. The best is to use noncustododial wallet if they want to have the full control, it will be their keys and their coins on blockchain.

I always tell my friends the differences, non of them ever known the differences, all they want is that they want to buy bitcoin. They do not even know the differences between exchanges and wallets, not to talk of custodial wallets and noncustododial wallets. I remembered a girl that told me about a guy that recommended Binance for her that his coins has been on the exchange for 2 years and nothing happened, that it is a good exchange. I always find it difficult with my fellow Nigerians about cryptocurrencies, they are only following the trends but not knowing the privacy and security aspect.

The problem I see here is that it has happened at the request of law enforcement, hence they have probably had a warrant of some sort.
Maybe it's something that the affected users can ask for/request, so they know where they have to ask reimbursements from (if they are entitled, which I kinda doubt), or at least they can have the peace of mind that's not the exchange that's trying to scam them (not that it matters much, unfortunately).


Since they didn't sell, it's an unrealized loss. If the funds will b frozen for longer, it may turn out as profit, who knows?


Unfortunately this comes together with Binance being more open to all government requests. They've have given all the signals about this last year.
Centralized trading is no longer good for small fish from restricted countries, unfortunately. Whether the reasons are legit or not, they are at the mercy of the exchange, which sooner or later does have the potential to turn bad, no matter how is the exchange called. Sorry.

Couple days back there has been trading hashtags like #Binancestopscammingnigerians on the bird app (twitter) in which affected parties came out airing their views on how unhappy they have been with binance seizing their funds with many claiming (can't verify this) to having their life savings frozen and they can't have access it on the exchange, there were screenshot and some unprofessional respond from the Binance support team.

Well it has been sang numerous times of not using exchange as wallet, I believe we still have a majority of users doing that especially the new incoming users that make use of centralized exchange for buying of coins and just deciding to hold there for easier selling especially in underdeveloping countries.

We need to do more in enlightening users on the disadvantages of centralized platform for storing of coins. We owe it to them as experience users and those who had been in the system before their arrival. This centralized exchange keep tempting them with juicy offers like staking, airdrop and assurance of their funds been secure yet they throw them under the bus with the easiest given opportunity.

Many Nigerian funds were frozen without prior warning and it took the power of social media before the Binance teams came up with a message apologizing and given reason for the mass restrictions on accoun, just to quote a statement of interest.


While there was hundreds of complaints with screenshot they have come out with this excuses. That's an unrealistic number to be associated with fraud, It's unfair for exchange to just go around freezing people account. I'm pretty sure many must have lost a huge percentage of profit to the recent decrease in market. Is 2022 and centralized Exchanges are still bullying their customers something has to be done.