Binance to shut down multiple leveraged token services

Binance announced that it will delist and cease redemptions for some of its leveraged tokens on April 3.
Binance announced that it will delist and cease redemptions for some of its leveraged tokens on April 3.

Crypto exchange Binance has said it will cease support for some of its leveraged tokens linked to Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and BNB (BNB) on April 3. 

Binance announced the decision to end support for leveraged tokens paired with Tether (USDT) on Feb. 19. The leveraged tokens affected include BTCUP and BTCDOWN, ETHUP and ETHDOWN, and BNBUP and BNBDOWN.

The crypto exchange will suspend the trading and subscription services for the three leveraged token pairs on Feb. 28 at 06:00 UTC. According to Binance, all trade orders for the leveraged tokens that they mentioned will be “automatically removed” on the set date. This means that users will not be able to place any orders from that time onward. Binance urged its users to trade the leveraged tokens that they are holding into other assets before the set deadline.

Schedule for shutting down leveraged token pairs. Source: Binance

Following this, the exchange said that it will gradually delist and cease redemption of the tokens, starting on April 1 and continuing until April 3. Binance said that users will be able to redeem their tokens before the delisting date.

However, if users fail to redeem their tokens by the deadline, the exchange said that it will convert the tokens into USDT based on their corresponding value on the delisting date. Binance will distribute the tokens to the users’ accounts within 24 hours and remove the leveraged tokens from the users’ wallets.

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Binance’s leveraged tokens are derivative products that give investors leveraged exposure to the crypto assets they are linked to. The tokens represent a basket of perpetual contract positions and are influenced by the price movements in the perpetual contract market.

According to Binance, leveraged tokens allow crypto traders to be exposed to leveraged positions without putting up any collateral. It also allows them to not need to maintain a maintenance margin level and worry about getting liquidated. Despite the benefits, Binance warned that trading leveraged tokens also comes with its own risks, including the “effects of price movements in the perpetual contracts market, premiums, and funding rates.”

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