Binance suspends withdrawals for two hours due to backlog
14:09, 1 November 2021
Binance disabled withdrawals for roughly two hours Monday morning, the cryptocurrency exchange reported on Twitter. A withdrawal backlog was cited as the reason for the suspension of activity.
“We have temporarily disabled all crypto withdrawals due to a large backlog,” the company which handles more than 1.4 million transaction per second tweeted at 7:37am EDT (UTC-4). “We expect this to last about 30 minutes.”
After almost one more hour, at 8:22am, Binance tweeted “Update: crypto withdrawals have been closed again. Further updates will be shared in this thread.”
Users react
Of course, these announcements were not well received by many Twitter users. Some even threatened legal action.
User Elia Muschio (@EliaMuschio) replied to the withdrawal suspension announcement, “I can’t get MY MONEY? Are you kidding me?” before threatening a class action lawsuit and demanding a resumption of withdrawal activity. The Elia Muschio account has two followers on Twitter.
Another Twitter user, Kody (@bollinet) threatened “[t]his is to sue!! They have lost me as a customer and they have annoyed me a lot. We will have to file a joint claim…”
Others were more measured, asking legitimate questions to the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
“My withdrawal transaction is stuck on Awaiting approval for more than one hour. Is it because I withdrew during this problem?” asked a Twitter user named Vinck Didler (@didlerVinck). “Is it going to be okay for this transaction? I contacted the customer support desk but they are busy at the moment.”
Others claimed the withdrawal blackout was preventing them from executing trades over Binance. “Will u process withdrawal today?” asked xZandeR (@vaida_george). “Initial transaction cancelled, the current is not processed!”
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Withdrawals resume
Finally, at 9:48am, two hours and eleven minutes after the initial announcement, Binance tweeted “crypto withdrawals have been (sic) resumed.”
Others took the news in stride. “I’ve experienced this first hand on (three) occasions on a different exchange,” noted Twitter user DB CRYPTO COOPER (@CryptoVic). Carl Van Elsen (@CarlVanElsen) just replied “First time, friend?”
Rival crypto exchange Coinbase also experienced what it called “intermittent outages” last week, due to what it called “a significant increase in traffic.” On two separate occasions on 27 October Coinbase reported “there was a higher rate of cancelled and refunded transfers,” on its blog. “Both were triggered by system bottlenecks caused by elevated traffic.”
Binance, founded in 2017 by CEO Changpeng Zhao, is based in the Cayman Islands and is not traded publicly. Binance is currently under investigation by the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the US Department of Justice for tax evasion and money laundering.
Read more: Binance suspends deposits for key EU payments network
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