Four hour block on bitcoin withdrawals across Sunday and Monday
Pending transactions cleared with higher fees Binance

May 7 Reuters Cryptocurrency exchange Binance halted bitcoin withdrawals for several hours on Monday, citing heavy volumes and a surge in processing fees, before clearing them at a higher cost.

Late on Sunday and again early on Monday the world39;s biggest crypto exchange shut bitcoin withdrawals saying there was a glut of pending transactions because it hadn39;t offered socalled miners a high enough reward to log the trades on the blockchain.

The halt pushed bitcoin lower though its losses were marginal, with the cryptocurrency last down about 1 to 28,162, its lowest in nearly a week.

Our set fees did not anticipate the recent surge in bitcoin network gas fees, Binance said in a tweet. We39;re replacing the pending bictoin withdrawal transactions with a higher fee so that they get picked up by mining pools.

Gas fees refer to payments made to crypto miners whose computing power processes transactions on the blockchain.

If the withdrawal amount is large, the gas fee required to process the transaction may also be large, especially during times of high network congestion, Joshua Chu, group chief risk officer at blockchain technology group XBE, Coinllectibles and Marvion.

We need more information as to what has led to the large withdrawals. After an hourlong stoppage late on Sunday and several hours on Monday, Binance said withdrawals resumed….