Binance halts Bitcoin withdrawals for the second time in 12 hours

Bitcoin (BTC) withdrawals on Binance have again been temporarily shuttered as the crypto exchange claimed it was suffering from 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

Earlier on May 7, Binance also had to temporarily suspend Bitcoin withdrawals, claiming there was an overflow of transactions on the blockchain.

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.

A mempool is an area where transactions on the Bitcoin network “wait” before being verified by each blockchain node

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

Cointelegraph contacted Binance for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.