Binance halts Bitcoin withdrawals for the second time in 12 hours

Bitcoin (BTC) withdrawals on Binance have again been temporarily shuttered as the crypto exchange claimed it was suffering from a large backlog of pending withdrawals.

Binance tweeted on May 8 that it closed off BTC withdrawals “temporarily” as there were a “large volume of pending transactions.”

Earlier on May 7, Binance also had to temporarily suspend Bitcoin withdrawals, claiming there was an overflow of transactions on the blockchain.

At the time, the Bitcoin mempool had a backlog of around 400,000 transactions waiting to be processed. That’s now swelled to nearly 485,000 according to data from mempool.space.

Bitcoin mempool at 2:30 am UTC on May 8. Source: mempool.space

A mempool is an area where transactions on the Bitcoin network “wait” before being verified by each blockchain node

The exchange said it was “working on a fix” and withdrawals for the crypto would be back “as soon as possible.”

This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.