BTC halted/delayed by Robinhood. Binance resumes but ....

It's going to cost you a bit more.

The number of unconfirmwd transactions was approaching 500,000 when the second halt took place, from around 400,000 when the first pause occurred. It is now beginning to decline, and is currently just over 430,000 over a 12-hour period. Binance has significantly slid in its position for bitcoin trading volume and is no longer in the top 10 exchanges for bitcoin trading pairs.

Binance lifts block on bitcoin withdrawals amid heavy volumes Cryptocurrency exchange Binance halted bitcoin withdrawals for several hours today, citing heavy volumes and a surge in processing fees, before clearing them at a higher cost.

Late yesterday and again early today the world’s biggest crypto exchange shut bitcoin withdrawals saying there was a glut of pending transactions because it hadn’t offered so-called miners a high enough reward to log the trades on the blockchain.

The halt pushed bitcoin BTC=BTSP lower though its losses were marginal, with the cryptocurrency last down about 1 per cent to US$28,162, its lowest in nearly a week.

“Our set fees did not anticipate the recent surge in (bitcoin) network gas fees,” Binance said in a tweet. “We’re replacing the pending bictoin withdrawal transactions with a higher fee so that they get picked up by mining pools.”

Gas fees refer to payments made to crypto miners whose computing power processes transactions on the blockchain.

“If the withdrawal amount is large, the gas fee required to process the transaction may also be large, especially during times of high network congestion,” Joshua Chu, group chief risk officer at blockchain technology group XBE, Coinllectibles and Marvion.

“We need more information as to what has led to the large withdrawals.” After an hour-long stoppage late yesterday and several hours today, Binance said withdrawals resumed.

“To prevent a similar recurrence ... our fees have been adjusted.” In a separate tweet Binance denied there had been large outflows from the platform.

In March, Binance had suspended deposits and withdrawals citing tech issues. Twenty-four hour trading volume on Binance was US$6.9 billion according to analytics site CoinMarketCap, more than eight times the next-largest venue, Coinbase. — Reuters

NOT YOUR KEYS, NOT YOUR CRYPTO