Gate says dividend error affected 200 accounts and it will cover losses

Gate applied a stock dividend charge to the wrong BENUSDT contract on Wednesday, triggering liquidations despite little movement in the contract's price. On Monday, Gate announced that Franklin Resources' $0.33 per-share dividend would pass through BENUSDT at 08:00 UTC on Wednesday. Under Gate's rules, traders betting on a rise would receive the payment, while traders betting on a fall would pay it. Trader screenshots showed BENUSDT trading near $0.000585, the price of a crypto token sharing the ticker rather than a stock price. The $0.33 charge was roughly 564 times the contract's price. The charge depleted some traders' margin and triggered forced closures of their positions. Gate's notice had warned traders betting on a fall that low balances could trigger liquidation. Some accounts used a shared margin pool, so other positions closed too. A screenshot posted by a trader showed an account balance of negative $1.46 million. Traders betting on a rise received unusually large credits; it has not been confirmed whether any of that money was withdrawn. Godot, who leads Gate's creator community program, said duplicate names caused the error and that it affected 200 accounts. Godot said Gate found and fixed the problem within minutes, was restoring balances and would bear the full loss. Gate has not published a detailed incident report or said how it will handle the credits paid to traders betting on a rise. Gate added Japanese stock trading in August as it expanded its stock products. The New York Stock Exchange recently signed a deal to bring tokenized US stocks to crypto users.