Cryptocurrency enthusiasts will all agree that the year 2017 was rather spectacular. Not only did we see all prices increase in a significant manner, we also saw exchanges struggle to keep up with demand. And just last week, Binance was forced to halt user registrations due to overwhelming success. The company has released some interesting details as to why this decision was made. It certainly makes a lot of sense for the site to upgrade its infrastructure well in advance.
Binance’s User Growth is Mind-Blowing
During the last six months of 2017, we saw a lot of exchanges suffer from an influx of new user registrations. That’s not just because all these users tax sites’ infrastructures themselves, but also because accounts will need to be verified sooner or later. It is evident this strain on resources has thrown a lot of companies for a loop, and Binance has taken the brunt of it. This platform has quickly become the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange based on trading volume alone. That is rather remarkable, considering that the Hong Kong-based company was relatively unknown until early 2017.
According to Binance CEO Zhao Changpeng, the company recently added 240,000 new users in just one hour. While some people would gladly state that this number is impossible to achieve, it is the information Zhao shared with Bloomberg Television earlier this week. At that rate, the company would see close to 4 million new user registrations on a daily basis. Given the global interest in cryptocurrency, that number may be achievable, although it is unlikely it will become the new normal.
As one would guess, the company was ill-prepared for such spectacular growth in a very short time frame. It is doubtful any cryptocurrency exchange in the world would be able to deal with such a vast amount of new users on a daily basis. Although it is evident the interest in cryptocurrency has never been higher than it is right now, over 200,000 new users per hour is pretty significant. Most smaller exchanges don’t even have 200,000 users in total.
It seems Binance is especially popular among institutional traders who want to get involved in cryptocurrency directly. That is rather interesting, as it seems there would be other exchanges with better reputations which could fit the bill as well. Then again, Binance has the most trading volume in the world right now, even though the company has halted user registrations for the time being.
It remains unclear when Binance will accept new user registrations. With the site’s traffic already hitting alarming heights, it is evident its infrastructure will need some big upgrades in the future. The company is making improvements as we speak, but there is no official ETA as to when services will be reopened to the general public.
Binance’s main front-end infrastructure resides on Amazon Web Services, and the company has hit the maximum number of servers that it can purchase from Amazon. All of this goes to show we need some form of decentralized technology to keep things moving along. Right now, no such service exists, although some projects are currently in development as we speak. Looking for other cloud computing services is not necessarily a valid option for Binance, as AWS is the biggest player in this market right now.
