Binance Halts Bitcoin Withdrawals Due to High Volume of Pending Transactions
Crypto exchange Binance announced on May 8 that it had temporarily halted Bitcoin (BTC) withdrawals due to a backlog of pending transactions. This is the second time in two days that Binance has halted Bitcoin withdrawals, citing similar reasons.
The exchange tweeted on May 8 that it was closing off BTC withdrawals temporarily, as its “set fees did not anticipate the recent surge in [Bitcoin] network gas fees.” The exchange later updated that it was replacing the pending BTC withdrawal transactions with higher fees so that they could be picked up by mining pools. After nearly three hours, Binance announced that BTC withdrawals had resumed, with pending transactions being processed with higher transaction fees.
Binance also stated that it was working to enable withdrawals via the Lightning Network, which it believes could mitigate such withdrawal halts in the future.
Previous Withdrawal Halt and Bitcoin Mempool Congestion
Binance had also suspended Bitcoin withdrawals on May 7 due to an overflow of transactions on the blockchain, reopening withdrawals over an hour and a half later. At that time, the Bitcoin mempool had around 400,000 transactions waiting to be processed. By the time of Binance’s second withdrawal halt, the mempool had swelled to nearly 485,000 transactions, according to data from mempool.space. A mempool is an area where transactions on the Bitcoin network “wait” before being verified by each blockchain node.
Binance Addresses Bitcoin Outflows
Binance experienced significant Bitcoin net negative outflows on May 7, with about 175,650 BTC worth approximately $4.95 billion leaving the exchange that day, according to data from CryptoQuant. However, Binance claimed that this outflow was actually it moving Bitcoin between its hot and cold wallets.
Bitcoin Price Falls
As per Cointelegraph data, the price of Bitcoin fell approximately 3.5% from its weekly high of over $29,700 on May 6.
A spokesperson for Binance told Cointelegraph that there were no additional details to add at this time.
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