Binance has recently been seen blocking funds of users on the plea of “related account” / “linked account” and ask the user to pay for the disputed amount while not sharing any actual information. The frequency of such cases is still very low but it highlights the risk of using centralized exchanges. Binance may block your funds if they think that your account is linked to another user who has unresolved disputes and may ask you to pay for that dispute or wait for the dispute to end leaving your account useless and in a permanent locked state.

What is Linked Account / Related Account

In a linked account / related account Binance will block your crypto assets and ask you to pay for a disputed case for another account which you will have no knowledge about.

Binance does not share much details about the issue nor they tell how they evaluate that the account is related with the user but in both cases reported to us users were not aware of the email address which is partially shared by Binance CS. In one case they explicitly said that the other user who has an dispute is not “blood related” to you. It is also unclear if they see that people have shared the same Internet / WiFi as in one case the user told us that no one signed another Binance account from their cell phone. IP Flagging may not be a viable option as in Pakistan we are issued ‘dynamic IP addresses’ which means my IP address can end up in your use someday. Binance was asked to share how they have created the linked between these two accounts and to that they say it is their internal risk assessment systems which they can not talk about. Weird !

What are reported Binance Linked Account Cases ?

1. Binance has a p2p dispute with another user and they have established somehow that it is related to this user (but have explicitly said not blood related) and this user $60K account is locked and Binance is asking him to pay $30k+ to open the account. User is asking to share binance ID or any information so that he can connect with that user or establish to know how it might be linked ,but binance can’t share that. Details are shared on this x post .
2. A user deposited $2K to their binance account while applying for Binance Merchant Account. But as he deposited funds, his funds got locked and upon contacting Binance CS , he was told that “Upon review, we have identified that your account is linked to another user who currently has unresolved dispute.” and was provided with a partial email address and two order ID’s which as per the user are not his order IDs.

How to Deal with Binance Linked Account Issue ?

Asking the exchange does not help but luckily now we have a way to proceed as this comes under “Service Provider Misconduct” and falls under the purview of PVARA Grievance Portal. Launch a complaint on PVARA Grievance Portal and share details about your issue,