Binance halts Bitcoin withdrawals for the second time in 12 hours

The crypto exchange said it temporarily closed BTC withdrawals due to a “large volume of pending transactions.”

Bitcoin (BTC) withdrawals on Binance have again been temporarily shuttered, with the crypto exchange claiming it was due to a large backlog of pending withdrawals.

Binance tweeted on May 8 that it closed off BTC withdrawals “temporarily” as there was a “large volume of pending transactions.”

It added the transactions are still pending, as its “set fees did not anticipate the recent surge in [Bitcoin] network gas fees.”

There is a large volume of withdrawal transactions from Binance still pending as our set fees did not anticipate the recent surge in $BTC network gas fees.

Our team is working to accelerate the confirmation of all pending transactions.

We’ll provide updates here.

— Binance (@binance) May 8, 2023

The exchange said it was “working on a fix,” and that withdrawals for Bitcoin would be back “as soon as possible.” It added it was working to “accelerate the confirmation of all pending transactions.”

Earlier on May 7, Binance also had to temporarily suspend Bitcoin withdrawals, claiming there was an overflow of transactions on the blockchain. It reopened withdrawals over an hour and a half later.

At the time, the Bitcoin mempool had a backlog of around 400,000 transactions waiting to be processed. That’s now swelled to nearly 485,000, according to data from mempool.space.