Bitcoin withdrawal was halted on Binance for nearly 2 hours

Binance exchange faced criticism over failure to give withdrawal of Bitcoin on the platform citing network congestion.

Binance is a top-ranked crypto exchange and the services of this exchange are also top-notch. To this date, Binance holds nearly 70-80% of the global crypto trade market cap, so this exchange always remains aware of the maintained & stable services to the users. 

On 7 May 2023, Bitcoin withdrawal on the Binance exchange was stopped citing high transaction load on the Bitcoin network.

At the time, the Bitcoin mempool was clogged with over 400,000 transactions. In short, 400k transactions were waiting to go through the final confirmation of the transaction. 

Binance exchange officially suspended Bitcoin withdrawal support on the platform & confirmed that the Bitcoin withdrawal option will be opened by the exchange when congestion gets down.

We've temporarily closed $BTC withdrawals as the #Bitcoin network is experiencing a congestion issue.

Our team is currently working on a fix until the network is stabilized and will reopen $BTC withdrawals as soon as possible.

Rest assured, funds are SAFU.

— Binance (@binance) May 7, 2023

On the Binance exchange, Bitcoin withdrawal was suspended for nearly 2 hours. Within that time frame, Bitcoin withdrawal via Bep20 & ERC-20 was available.

On the other hand, other crypto exchanges increased bitcoin withdrawal fees on the platform & kept Bitcoin withdrawal support open for customers.

At the time, OKX exchange tried to promote its Bitcoin lightning network support feature among the crypto traders, which allows Bitcoin transactions at nearly zero fees. 

#BTC deposit and withdrawal services on #OKX are running fine. On chain transaction fee is currently high but our transactions are going through fine.

Protip: If you want to save a few bucks, please use the lightning network. pic.twitter.com/VR2SUB6xXg

— OKX (@okx) May 7, 2023

ORC-20 & Bitcoin Network load

People believe that the Bitcoin network saw high traffic of network transactions because of the surging popularity of ORC-20 (Bitcoin ordinals) in the Crypto market.

In Jan of this year, a group of few people introduced the BRC-20 concept. BRC-20 protocol allows the creation of meme coins at the cost of Bitcoin network fees. BRC-20 doesn’t have any use case like ERC-20 but is still getting popularity as a new concept & new trend in this innovative sector. 

Recently BRC-20 creators brought an update for this protocol & introduced ORC-20, the next generation of BRC-20 to overcome the challenges associated with BRC-20.

A new ORC20 for upgrading Bitcoin's new BRC20 coin issuance mechanism is launched, which canceled restrictions such as 4 letters, Fixed keys, etc.; but its complexity and centralization have also drawn criticism. The more important problem is that it has no advantage over ERC20,… pic.twitter.com/23ErRjPO9P

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) May 5, 2023

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