Binance restarts dogecoin withdrawals following technical glitch and CEO's skirmish with Elon Musk

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Binance restarts dogecoin withdrawals following technical glitch and CEO's skirmish with Elon Musk
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  • Binance said Monday investors could resume withdrawing dogecoin after it fixed a technical glitch.
  • The crypto exchange halted withdrawals for about two weeks after a network upgrade led to technical problems.
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Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, said Monday investors could again withdraw dogecoin from their accounts after straightening out a technical problem that prompted a Twitter run-in between billionaire and dogecoin enthusiast Elon Musk and Binance's CEO Changpeng Zhao.

The exchange said withdrawals are fully open, about two weeks after it halted withdrawals of the 10th most valuable cryptocurrency because of a glitch in its database system following a network upgrade.

Binance "tested everything" on Saturday by resuming withdrawals but did so silently to ensure there were no further issues, it said in a statement.

"What began as a fairly straightforward upgrade, turned into an issue where Binance users were unable to withdraw DOGE for the last 17 days," it said, adding that 1,634 users had been sent old transactions.

"It was an unlikely and unfortunate coincidence for Binance, the DOGE network, and DOGE hodlers. If we at Dogecoin Core maintainers and Binance had tried to plan this, we simply would not have been able to — not quite the shady circumstances that some had suggested," Binance said in Monday's statement.

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The company was referring to Musk's tweet on November 23: "Hey @cz_binance, what's going on with your Doge customers? Sounds shady."

Musk's comment spurred a response from Zhao: "Elon, we are pretty certain it is an issue with the latest #doge wallet," he wrote and apologized for any inconvenience. Zhao wrapped up the tweet asking Musk, "What happened here?," and linked to a Guardian story earlier this month about Tesla's recall of 12,000 vehicles in the US stemming from a software glitch.

No single entity was at fault for the technical problem nor did the DOGE Network have prior knowledge of the "rare issue," Binance said Monday. "So rest assured, as CZ said - no one's getting fired," it said, referring to Zhao's November 24 statement saying the company was working to resolve the problem.

Dogecoin on Monday traded about 11% higher at $0.221485, driving its market capitalization to $29.3 billion.

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