Binance Resumes BTC Withdrawals Hours after Halt

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has recommenced processing its users' withdrawals on the Bitcoin network hours after halting the service.

Earlier on Monday, Changpeng Zhao, the Founder and CEO of Binance, announced that the platform has temporarily paused Bitcoin withdrawals on the platform.

Zhao explained that “a stuck transaction causing a backlog” necessitated the action. The co-founder in an initial Twitter post said that the issue will be cleared in 30 minutes. However, he later tweeted saying the impasse would take a bit longer to fix. 

This is only impacting the Bitcoin network. You can still withdraw Bitcoin on other networks like BEP-20. Likely this is going to take a bit longer to fix than my initial estimate. More updates soon. Thanks for your patience and understanding🙏

In a statement announcing the resumption of BTC withdrawals later on Monday, Binance said it was still processing pending withdrawals. “We are still working to process the pending Bitcoin (BTC) network withdrawals, and this is estimated to be completed in the next couple of hours,” the exchange said in an update.

“Please note that pending Bitcoin (BTC) network withdrawals will be rejected. In this case, the relevant users will need to resubmit their withdrawal requests,” Binance added.

Earlier, Zhao had stated that the halt on BTC withdrawals only affected the Bitcoin network. Zhao, who also pointed out that users could still withdraw BTC from other networks like BEP-20, noted that all users’ funds are in the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU).

While BEP-20 is a token standard deployed in creating tokens on the Binance Smart Chain, SAFU is an emergency insurance fund. Binance established SAFU in July 2018 to protect users' funds.

The exchange's action follows a similar measure taken by Celsius, a crypto lending platform. Celsius in an announcement on Monday said it was pausing all withdrawals, swaps and transfers between accounts. The firm said the decision was taken due to extreme volatility in the cryptocurrency market.

Bitcoin slumped by 14% at the beginning of the week. The cryptocurrency fell below $25,000, which is the lowest since December 2020.

According to estimates, more than $200 billion was lost in the cryptocurrency market during the crash.

TIME reports that the fall follows the release of the May 2022 Consumer Price Index by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Over the past day, other top cryptocurrencies have slumped to between 15 and 25%. These include Ethereum (ETH), Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL) and Dogecoin (DOGGE).

Meanwhile, last week Zhao disclosed that Binance was seeking two licenses in the Philippines. These are the virtual asset service provider (VASP) and the electronic money issuer (EMI) licenses.

Additionally, the US subsidiary of the exchange recently launched a new staking platform, Binance.US Staking.

Binance.US explained that the new staking platform comes with an 'auto-restake' feature and enables users to stake a selection of tokens.

“Multiple supported Proof-of-Stake cryptocurrencies are available immediately on Binance.US Staking, including Audius (AUDIO), Avalanche (AVAX), BNB, Cosmos (ATOM), Livepeer (LPT), Solana (SOL) and The Graph (GRT), with more supported tokens being added to the platform in the near future,” Binance said in a statement.