Binance halts Bitcoin withdrawals as crypto turmoil continues

By Ovunc Kutlu

ANKARA (AA) - Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange platform, announced on Monday that it has halted Bitcoin withdrawals as the turmoil in the cryptocurrency market continues.

"Temporary pause of $BTC withdrawals on #Binance due to a stuck transaction causing a backlog. Should be fixed in ~30 minutes. Will update," Binance CEO and founder Changpeng Zhao wrote on his personal Twitter account.

"Funds are SAFU," he added, referring to the Secure Asset Fund for Users that was established in 2018 by the company to protect its users.

Zhao, however, later wrote on Twitter that the issue will take longer to resolve, saying "Likely this is going to take a bit longer to fix than my initial estimate. More updates soon."

He noted that the backlog of transactions is only impacting the Bitcoin network, adding that users can still withdraw Bitcoin on other networks such as BEP-20, or Binance Smart Chain.

The announcement came amid a major sell-off in the crypto market, which saw its total value plummeting below $1 trillion earlier Monday – a level not seen in 17 months.

Price of Bitcoin, the world's largest crypto by market size, dove to $23,015 at 10.43 a.m. EDT (1443GMT) on the platform. Ethereum, the world's biggest altcoin by market value, dipped at $1,192 at the time. Both were down more than 16% for the day.

Binance had a daily spot trading volume of approximately $30 billion, with more than $110 billion in derivatives, in the past 24 hours, according to data from the digital asset price-tracking websites CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko.