On Monday, the cryptocurrency exchange Binance temporarily stopped all bitcoin withdrawals due to excessive volume and an increase in processing costs before clearing them at a higher cost. The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange shut down bitcoin withdrawals late on Sunday and again early on Monday, claiming there were too many pending transactions because it hadn’t given so-called miners a large enough compensation to record the deals on the blockchain. The stoppage caused bitcoin to fall, although only slightly; at its lowest point in almost a week, it was down approximately 1% at $28,162.
In a tweet, Binance stated that “our set fees did not anticipate the recent surge in (bitcoin) network gas fees.” We’re adding a larger charge to the pending Bitcoin withdrawal transactions to ensure that mining pools will accept them. Gas fees are sums paid to cryptocurrency miners whose processing power is used to process transactions on the blockchain. “If the withdrawal amount is large, the gas fee required to process the transaction may also be large, especially during times of high network congestion,” said Joshua Chu, group chief risk officer of blockchain technology companies XBE, Collectibles, and Marvion.
“We need more details on what caused the significant withdrawals,” Binance said that withdrawals had resumed after an hour-long halt late on Sunday and for a number of hours on Monday. “Our fees have been adjusted to avoid a repeat of the same situation.” Binance refuted claims that the site had experienced significant outflows in a different tweet. Binance stopped accepting payments and withdrawals in March, citing technical difficulties. According to analytics platform CoinMarketCap, Binance had a twenty-four hour trading volume of $6.9 billion, which was more than eight times the next-largest exchange, Coinbase.