Binance Stirs Market After Reportedly Making Bitcoin Withdrawals Worth Over $650M

Binance, the world's largest centralized crypto exchange platform by trading volume, made headlines once again after on-chain data revealed it has made a huge Bitcoin withdrawal – nearly 20,000 coins valued at approximately $652 million.

Blockchain.com said Binance moved 19,197 BTCs valued at around $652 million, in just two transactions over the weekend.

It was later confirmed by on-chain tracker WhaleChart. The massive withdrawals sparked speculations within the crypto market, especially since Bitcoin had been on an uptrend.

Binance has not yet said anything about the withdrawals made over the weekend.

While whales moving their Bitcoin stash is not unusual in the crypto world, it's rare for Binance to move a huge amount of crypto assets.

Binance's latest move came after the exchange and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), urged the Illinois court to drop a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission against it. The exchange accused the CFTC of trying to use a "trojan horse" to make itself function as a de facto global crypto police.

"The CFTC relies on new and broad arguments that would allow it to regulate any activity in cryptocurrency (or other assets) related to a derivatives product anywhere on the globe," Binance said in a court filing last week. "U.S. law governs domestically but does not control the world. Congress did not make the CFTC the world's derivatives police."

It alleged the CFTC's complaint "resorts to incendiary language" against the exchange and CZ.

Bitcoin surged last week when eagle-eyed individuals spotted BlackRock's iShares exchange-traded fund ticker on the official website of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which sparked speculations that the Securities and Exchange Commission could approve the BTC ETF filings anytime soon.

BlackRock maintained that it was waiting for the SEC to give the green light on its amended spot Bitcoin ETF prospectus.

After BlackRock, investment giant VanEck also amended its spot Bitcoin ETF prospectus, highlighting that it will use BTC to seed the fund.

BTC was trading in the green zone at $34,496.97 as of 7:46 a.m. ET on Monday, with a 24-hour trading volume up by 66.16% at $14,819,316,170. It represented a 1.05% increase in the last 24 hours and a 13.3% gain over the past seven days.

Bitcoin's total circulating supply stands at 19,528,018 tokens, with its value up by 1.05% at a market cap of $19,528,175, according to data from CoinMarketCap.