Hassan Maishera
TL;DR
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Binance temporarily halted Bitcoin withdrawals on its platform twice over the weekend.
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The crypto exchange cited network congestion as the reason why it halted withdrawals.
Binance Pauses Bitcoin Withdrawals Twice
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, halted Bitcoin withdrawals on its platform twice over the weekend.
The crypto exchange cited a large volume of pending transactions caused by network congestion on the platform.
In its tweet, Binance added that the transactions were still pending due to the fact that the set fees did not anticipate the recent surge in the Bitcoin network’s gas fee.
We've temporarily closed #BTC withdrawals due to the large volume of pending transactions.
— Binance (@binance) May 8, 2023
Our team is currently working on a fix and will reopen $BTC withdrawals as soon as possible.
Rest assured, funds are SAFU.
The cryptocurrency exchange further informed its users that it was replacing the pending [Bitcoin] withdrawal transactions with a higher fee so that they get picked up by mining pools.
A few hours after its initial tweet, Binance announced that Bitcoin withdrawals had resumed, with pending transactions being processed with higher transaction fees.
The cryptocurrency exchange added that it was working on enabling withdrawals via the Lightning Network, which could help eliminate withdrawal issues in the future.
However, earlier on Sunday, Binance had to temporarily suspend Bitcoin withdrawals. The cryptocurrency exchange claimed that there was an overflow of transactions on the Bitcoin network.
The Bitcoin mempool recorded a backlog of around 400,000 transactions waiting to be processed. The number surged to 485,000 prior to Binance’s second withdrawal halt.
According to the data obtained from CryptoQuant, the halts saw Binance record net negative outflows on May 7, with around 175,650 BTC worth around $4.95 billion flowing from its platform.
The cryptocurrency exchange clarified that the outflow of data was Binance moving bitcoins between its cold and hot wallets. Bitcoin has since lost more than 2% of its value over the last 24 hours and is now trading just above the $28,200 mark.
