Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, temporarily paused withdrawals of bitcoin for the second time in less than 12 hours, citing congestion on the token’s network.
The step was taken because of the “large volume of pending transactions” and “our team is currently working on a fix and will reopen $BTC withdrawals as soon as possible”, Binance said on Twitter.
The platform took a similar action for about 90 minutes on Sunday. Bitcoin slipped on Monday, falling about 3% and trading at roughly US$28 200 as of 9.44am in Singapore. An index of the biggest 100 digital assets also posted a moderate decline.
Earlier this year, bitcoin developer Casey Rodarmor released a protocol, called Ordinals, that helped people mint nonfungible tokens — NFTs or digital collectibles — on the network for the first time. That boosted transactions and fees on the bitcoin blockchain. — Suvashree Ghosh, (c) 2023 Bloomberg LP