Binance to halt Polygon’s MATIC trades for upcoming POL swap, warns users of potential scams

The world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, has announced that it will support Polygon token migration from MATIC to POL. The exchange disclosed that it will stop accepting deposits and withdrawals by September 09, 2024.

The token swap will complete Polygon’s upgrade of its native token to POL, which the team said will have a crucial role in the Polygon AggLayer. Many projects have been upgrading their tokens recently, with MakerDAO being the latest with its upgrade to SKY.

Binance will migrate the token automatically

According to Binance, holders of MATIC on the exchange would not need to do anything as the token swap will happen automatically at a 1:1 ratio for MATIC to POL. However, the exchange will implement some processes before the swap eventually happens.

This starts with delisting all MATIC trading pairs and suspending pending spot trading orders on September 10, 2024. Affected pairs include MATIC/BNB, MATIC/BRL, MATIC/BTC, MATIC/ETH, MATIC/EUR, MATIC/FDUSD, MATIC/JPY, MATIC/TRY, MATIC/USDC, and MATIC/USDT.

After delisting, Binance will open trading for POL pairs by September 13, 2024. All the previous MATIC trading pairs will also be available for POL, signaling that there will not be any drastic changes.

Meanwhile, Binance will close all MATIC futures positions on September 9 with an automatic settlement and delisting of the contracts after settlement completion. Thus, users must close their open positions before this time to avoid automatic settlement. MATIC Margin trading would also be affected as Binance plans to suspend isolated margin borrowing by September 2 and remove all MATIC pairs from Cross and Isolated Margin by September 5.

Polygon Foundation transfers MATIC to Binance

In anticipation of the token swap, Polygon Foundation has moved 10 million MATIC tokens, worth $4.63 million, to Binance in the last 24 hours. This continues a trend of MATIC transfers to the exchange. Since June, the foundation has sent 50 million MATIC, worth $24.72 million, to Binance.

Although the reason behind those transfers is unclear, they have impacted the MATIC price. The token is down 4% today and has lost 17% of its value in the last seven days. In fact, the token swap would be more than welcome among MATIC holders, given that the token has fallen 57% year-to-date.

Many hope that the token upgrade will have a positive impact and raise POL’s value. According to Polygon Labs, the upgrade will make POL a hyper-productive token that will serve multiple chains within Polygon as the network expands.

Meanwhile, holders of MATIC planning to swap to POL would need to be extra cautious as bad actors seek to use that opportunity to steal assets. Polygon Discord server recently suffered a breach that allowed scammers to post phishing links and steal users’ funds.