Binance recently acquired a crypto-asset derivatives trading platform and announced that it intended to foray into the field of cryptocurrency futures, options, and other derivatives products. Hence, one of the things that it had to settle was the auto-deleveraging which governs counterparty liquidation. Looking at that section of Binance’s website, however, we can see that it is entirely copied from that of its competitor, BitMEX.
A few days ago, Binance announced the so-called “Battle for Binance Futures,” launching two futures testnet platforms. Shortly afterward, the exchange acquired a crypto-asset derivatives platform as a joint venture and foray into the field of cryptocurrency futures, options, and other derivatives.
It appears that Binance created a separate page explaining how Auto Deleveraging (AD) works. As it happens, the entire page is pretty much copy-pasted from the equivalent page of Binance’s direct competitor in the area of crypto derivatives, BitMEX.
Naturally, BitMEX was quick to pick up on this questionable (to say the least) move by Binance.
Congrats on the Testnet Futures launches @binance. Glad to see you enjoyed reading our documentation as much as we enjoyed writing it! pic.twitter.com/lLzcLcX6t4
— BitMEX (@BitMEXdotcom) September 4, 2019
Indeed, the page is copied word for word with a few brief exceptions. Given that BitMEX is in direct competition with Binance in the cryptocurrency derivatives market, it’s very strange that the world’s leading exchange allowed a rather silly mistake to occur.
Arthur Hayes, the CEO of BitMEX, staying entirely true to himself, was quick to call out Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, tweeting that they could do better than that.
Zhao’s response came swiftly. He said that the team had missed this in the due diligence process prior to the acquisition and that they hadn’t read the BitMEX documentation on their own.
Shame on us. 😂 Sorry about that. Missed this in the DD process before the acquisition (didn’t read the BitMex docs ourselves). Will fix/remove ASAP.
The official docs of Futures A platform (developed internally) are here: http://t.co/TPjvYgB2hr for your review.
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) September 4, 2019
Regardless of the reasons for the mistake, this doesn’t do Binance any good. It’s questionable why a leading cryptocurrency exchange has allowed itself to rip off another’s procedures without modifying them to their own specifications.