Binance Halts Cryptocurrency Withdrawals On Its Platform

Binance, the world's largest centralized crypto exchange platform by trading volume, announced Wednesday that it was halting its cryptocurrency withdrawals due to a "technical issue."

The exchange announced on its official X account that the team was currently working on a fix, during which crypto withdrawals will be temporarily unavailable.

Unfortunately, the exchange did not say when the service will resume. Binance, however, clarified that fiat withdrawals were not affected.

"We are experiencing a technical issue with crypto withdrawals," Binance wrote, adding, "As a result, they are temporarily unavailable whilst our team works on the fix. Fiat withdrawals are available and working. All funds are SAFU. We apologize for the inconvenience and will update on progress."

When an X user commented that they weren't able to withdraw from the platform, Binance responded with, "We're deeply grateful for your patience during this time. Rest assured, we will share an update promptly as soon as the matter is effectively dealt with. Meanwhile, we want to reaffirm that withdrawals in fiat currency are functioning smoothly. Your patience and understanding in this situation mean the world to us. Thank you!"

Data from the block reporter and analytics platform Etherscan showed that one of the last wallets processed by Binance was a crypto withdrawal at 6:45  a.m. ET on Wednesday, with the exchange announcing the suspension of the service a few minutes later.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) echoed the exchange's announcement and assured the community that funds were safe.

"Technical issue with a middleware service impacting withdrawals," CZ tweeted, adding, "Funds are SAFU. Our team is on it."

Binance had last paused crypto withdrawals in 2021 for 25 minutes because of "heavy backlog."

The latest outage took place after approximately $100 billion was traded across crypto platforms, which was considered the highest daily volume since Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX crashed in November 2022.

The surge in trading activity in the crypto market was triggered by the sudden spike in the price of Bitcoin, which rallied to a 16-month high of $34,300 on Tuesday.

The surge could have been triggered by positive news surrounding Wall Street giants' spot Bitcoin ETF applications, with BlackRock's iShares ETF and its ticker IBTC spotted on the official website of the DTCC despite that it has not yet been approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.