A trader identified as xunlu has alleged that more than 30 funding-rate arbitrage positions lost over 5 million USDT during a sharp surge in AKEUSDT perpetual futures on September 3. According to reports from crypto.news, the trader claimed the losses resulted from coordinated market activity rather than ordinary trading. However, Binance Customer Support responded that AKE recorded large price swings across several exchanges and on-chain markets during the same period, attributing the liquidations to market conditions and rejecting claims of a technical platform problem. The exchange's official support account posted from Chinese on September 3, describing the price movement as normal market volatility that appeared consistently across multiple mainstream platforms and on-chain markets.
The alleged losses occurred when AKEUSDT perpetual contract surged from about $0.0076 to nearly $0.044859 over roughly eight hours from the evening of September 2, with the most dramatic movement occurring in just seven minutes from 05:44, according to crypto.news and The Crypto Times reports. The trader characterized the episode as a short squeeze, where rising prices force short sellers to close positions by buying back contracts. CoinMarketCap data captured at 11:55 UTC on September 3 shows AKE at $0.008803 on September 1, $0.01654 on September 2, and $0.01287 on September 3, representing a 22.15% decline on the day. The trader's account of the move from $0.0076 to $0.044859 would represent a roughly 492% increase, which can rapidly reduce the margin supporting short futures positions.
According to Binance, the exchange does not offer AKE through its spot market, meaning the AKEUSDT perpetual contract cannot use an AKE price formed on Binance's own spot order book. Instead, the exchange calculates the contract's mark price from data gathered across several external spot venues using a multi-market index designed to reduce the effect of abnormal prints. Binance maintained that its systems remained operational while the contract moved sharply, with an internal review finding no fault in its pricing model, risk controls or liquidation engine. The exchange emphasized that its contracts use the mark price as the basis for forced liquidation rather than the latest transaction price from any single platform, with the mark price referencing data from multiple markets to reduce the effect of abnormal or extreme prices on liquidations.
The trader has requested transaction records, liquidation details and Binance's risk-control logs to examine the calculation process and has asked for compensation, citing that competing exchanges compensated users after the TUT episode on August 9. As reported by crypto.news, publicly available aggregated spot charts showed heavy volatility during the session, but the highest combined spot reading was below the contract peak cited by the trader. The report noted that the gap could have resulted from price differences between the futures contract, external spot venues, or the index used to produce the mark price, though it did not establish which factor accounted for the difference. The trader also argues that the AKE session resembled TUT structurally—low liquidity, small market capitalization, no fundamental catalyst, an extreme one-way move, and liquidations clustered across several platforms.
For U.S. readers, the AKE dispute concerns an offshore Binance product that is not offered through Binance.US. According to crypto.news, regulated perpetual futures began entering the U.S. market in 2026, with the CFTC approving a Kalshi Bitcoin perpetual contract in May, followed by contracts tied to other digital assets. The trader also referred to an earlier TUT liquidation incident and mentioned that competing exchanges compensated some affected users, though Binance has not agreed that the two events are comparable, maintaining that the AKE positions were closed because of market risk rather than an exchange pricing mistake. The complaint cites on-chain analyst EmberCN who traced a market-maker cluster that allegedly dumped SIREN, moved XPIN, and dumped AKE roughly 60% in early July before pumping it around 52-fold from $0.00019 to $0.01 through overlapping wallets, though The Crypto Times has not independently verified these wallet flows.
