Binance, the popular cryptocurrency exchange, has announced that Bitcoin withdrawals have been temporarily suspended due to a significant backlog of pending transactions.
On May 8th, Binance tweeted that BTC withdrawals were closed off temporarily due to the overwhelming volume of pending transactions. The exchange stated that these transactions are still pending because the fees were not set up to handle the recent spike in Bitcoin network gas fees.
Binance has assured its users that it is actively working on a solution to the backlog of pending transactions causing the temporary closure of Bitcoin withdrawals. The exchange has promised that Bitcoin withdrawals will resume as quickly as possible and is taking steps to expedite the confirmation of all transactions.
This is not the first time Binance has had to temporarily suspend Bitcoin withdrawals due to a high number of transactions on the blockchain. In a previous incident on May 7th, withdrawals were halted for over an hour and a half before being reopened.
At the time, the Bitcoin mempool, where pending transactions wait to be verified by each blockchain node, had around 400,000 transactions waiting to be processed. This number has now increased to almost 485,000 according to mempool.space data.
Binance saw a significant outflow of Bitcoin on May 7th, with 175,650 BTC, worth approximately $4.95 billion, leaving the exchange, as reported by CryptoQuant.
As a result of these issues, the price of Bitcoin has fallen by approximately 3.5% from its weekly high of over $29,700 on May 6th, according to Cointelegraph data.
