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(Kitco News) -
Bitcoin has started the week under pressure as Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, halted withdrawals of the number-one cryptocurrency twice in 12 hours after a move of 157,000 BTC sparked fears of a mass exodus from the exchange.
At 11 am EDT on Sunday, Binance announced the first of the halts for Bitcoin withdrawals on their Twitter account. “We've temporarily closed $BTC withdrawals as the #Bitcoin network is experiencing a congestion issue,” they wrote. “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.”
Around 90 minutes later, they announced withdrawals had resumed, and Bitcoin quickly returned to the $28,950 range it had been trading at prior to the halt.
The second pause was announced at 9:13 pm EDT, but by then, Bitcoin had been in freefall for nearly four hours after first breaking through its $28,000 support around 5:45 pm EDT. The second halt drove BTC quickly below $28,150, and it broke definitively below $28,000 around midnight EDT.
A major driver of Bitcoin’s precipitous decline was on-chain data showing the apparent withdrawal of 157,000 BTC worth $4.4 billion dollars from Binance, which contributed to a panic in the market. According to blockchain data company Coinglass, Binance saw 182,029 in BTC outflows over the last 24 hours, a staggering number considering the seven-day total was 190,324.
Binance posted a tweet at 12:30 am EDT explaining the move. “We’re aware that some data are showing a large volume of outflows from #Binance,” they wrote. “This ‘outflow’ are actually movements between Binance hot and cold wallets due to the BTC address adjustments.”
In fact, Julio Moreno, CryptoQuant's head of research, posted a tweet addressing the nature of the move at 5:30 pm. EDT.
A lot of people commenting about the huge Bitcoin outflows from Binance today.
— Julio Moreno (@jjcmoreno) May 7, 2023
Two transactions of 117K and 40K Bitcoin respectively.
In reality, these are bitcoin sent to newly created change addresses that belong to Binance.
Effective outflows are most likely just 10,100… pic.twitter.com/c5z8WOshG6
Even though Moreno is a credible source with a wide reach, the absence of an official explanation from Binance for several hours, combined with the halts on withdrawals for customers, left the market reeling and contributed to the sharp selloff in BTC.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) posted a tweet around 1:30 am EDT attempting to reassure Binance customers and the broader market by explaining the halts as a response to ballooning network fees.
4. There are some FUD about BTC withdrawal issues. Here is why. Bitcoin network fees are fluctuating, 18x in a month. ???????
— CZ ?? Binance (@cz_binance) May 8, 2023
(the screenshot is a google translate version) pic.twitter.com/iYcEx22xMJ
As a result of the withdrawal halts, pending Bitcoin transactions hit a record high of over 400,000 early Monday morning, which is higher than any levels seen during the bull runs of 2018 or 2021.
At 8:34 am EDT, Binance announced that the backlog had been cleared. “All pending $BTC withdrawal transactions have now been processed,” they wrote. “Once again, thank you for your patience and our team is already implementing solutions to make sure this doesn't happen again.”
At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $27,865, down 2% on the day.
