Bitcoin Network Congestion Causes Binance to Pause Withdrawals
Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, temporarily halted bitcoin withdrawals due to the overwhelming number of pending transactions in the Bitcoin protocol. This has continued to cause problems for the Bitcoin network, leading to delays and increased fees. Within two hours of Binance suspending withdrawals, the company resumed withdrawals.
On-chain data shows there are nearly 400,000 Bitcoin transactions still waiting to be processed, the highest number recorded since the bull runs of 2018 and 2021. The congestion on the network has caused the average per transaction fee to double since March, now standing at over $8, which is a 309% change from a year ago.
“This current fee increase is an anomaly,” says Colin Harper, the head of content at Luxor Technologies, a full-stack Bitcoin mining pool. “The main reason for this increase is due to the adoption of the BRC-20 standard, a new way of recording Bitcoin tokens. Adoption has driven up the fees.”
Currently, Bitcoin ordinal inscription tokens (BRC-20 standard) market capitalization stands at $482 million for 14,000 tokens, adding to Bitcoin’s traffic on the blockchain and causing the delays.
As of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $28,935, down 0.15% in the last 24 hours, indicating that the current market trend has not been significantly affected by the network congestion.
An Update:
Binance later resumed Bitcoin withdrawals after two hours of the initial announcement on Twitter. This was a relief to traders who feared that the congestion issues would persist. As Bitcoin’s popularity increases in usage and adoption, it is critical that blockchain technologies continually evolve to support their increased use to prevent similar problems in the future.
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According to https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/05/07/bitcoin-network-congestion-causes-binance-to-pause-withdrawals/
The material in this article is written on the basis of another article.