Binance Pauses Bitcoin Withdrawals Amid High Transaction Volume
Binance, a leading crypto exchange, paused Bitcoin withdrawals twice on Sunday, citing congestion caused by too many pending transactions. In a tweet, Binance announced, “We’ve temporarily closed #BTC withdrawals due to the large volume of pending transactions. Our team is currently working on a fix and will reopen $BTC withdrawals as soon as possible. Rest assured, funds are SAFU.”
Withdrawals resumed briefly before midnight Eastern, with Binance explaining that their set fees had not anticipated the recent surge in Bitcoin network gas fees. The exchange replaced the pending Bitcoin withdrawal transactions with a higher fee to ensure they were picked up by mining pools.
Binance Learns from the Incident and Adjusts Fees
To prevent a similar incident in the future, Binance adjusted its fees after the withdrawals resumed. The company stated in a tweet, “We will continue to monitor on-chain activity and adjust accordingly if needed… This is a learning opportunity for us, and we’ll do our best to prevent this from happening again.”
Earlier on Sunday, Binance had paused Bitcoin withdrawals for about 90 minutes due to the congestion. CoinDesk reported that there were nearly 400,000 pending Bitcoin transactions at the time.
Crypto Market Impact
On Sunday, Bitcoin prices experienced a 2% drop, while other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum and Litecoin, saw even greater declines. Despite this, the price of Bitcoin is up more than 70% year-to-date, though it has fallen nearly 9% over the past 12 months.
