Binance to integrate Lightning Network after Bitcoin withdrawals were suspended

On May 7, the cryptocurrency exchange Binance temporarily suspended Bitcoin withdrawals due to network congestion.

$BTC withdrawals are now resumed on #Binance.

Thank you for your patience and we apologize for any inconvenience.

— Binance (@binance) May 7, 2023

The feature was launched after an hour and a half, however in the early hours of May 8 the platform again suspended Bitcoin withdrawals due to “a large volume of pending transactions”.

We’ve temporarily closed #BTC withdrawals due to the large volume of pending transactions.

Our team is currently working on a fix and will reopen $BTC withdrawals as soon as possible.

Rest assured, funds are SAFU.

— Binance (@binance) May 8, 2023

Company representatives said that to resume operations for the second time, fees for all pending withdrawal requests had to be increased.

“To prevent this from happening in the future, our tariffs have been adjusted. We will continue to monitor network activity and make changes as necessary. Our team is also working on enabling Bitcoin withdrawals via Lightning Network, which will help in such situations,” Binance explained.

After several hours, the exchange resumed Bitcoin withdrawals, stating that all pending transfers had been completed.

According to mempool.space, at the time of writing the number of unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions stood at 422,729. The average transfer fee ranged from $8.9 to $9.7.

At the end of 2022, Binance suspended withdrawals for a number of assets and restricted some user accounts due to “abnormal price movements in certain trading pairs”. The list then included SUN, ARDR, OSMO, FUN and GLM.

Earlier, the platform was blocked from depositing in stablecoins USDT and USDC, issued on the Solana network.

In March 2023, the cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced the suspension of spot trading due to a “strange” error in the trailing stop order mechanism.