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Update 8:34 a.m. ET: Updates to say CEO extends initial estimate of withdrawal pause.
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, has briefly halted bitcoin (BTC-USD) withdrawals, CEO Changpeng Zhao wrote in a Twitter post Monday.
“Temporary pause of $BTC withdrawals on #Binance due to a stuck transaction causing a backlog. Should be fixed in ~30 minutes. Will update,” CZ noted.
The halt comes as cryptocurrencies face intense selling pressure in the face of surging consumer price inflation and an increasingly hawkish Fed.
In a follow-up Tweet, CZ said the pause on bitcoin (BTC-USD) withdrawals is “only impacting the Bitcoin network. You can still withdraw Bitcoin on other networks like BEP-20.” “Likely this is going to take a bit longer to fix than my initial estimate. More updates soon,” he added.
Major cryptos: bitcoin (BTC-USD -12.1%) is cratering to $24.1K in early morning trading, ethereum (ETH-USD -15.2%) is nosediving to $1.24K and binance coin (BNB-USD -12.9%) is dipping to $224. In turn, the global crypto market cap tanked below $1T for the first time since January 2021.
Earlier, crypto lending platform Celsius paused withdrawals.