Binance temporarily halted withdrawals
On the morning of August 17, Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange, made an announcement a temporarily halted withdrawals. According to Binance, the withdrawal freeze takes place across multiple networks due to a technical problem of the third-party provider. In a tweet, the exchange said the withdrawal pause incident took place at around 14:00 Vietnam and was resolved by the team within an hour.
>>> Read more: Guide to register Binance updated 2022
Earlier today, around 07:00am UTC, #Binance temporarily closed withdrawals for multiple networks due to an issue with a third-party technical provider.
Our team responded quickly, resolving the issue within 1-hour.
Funds are SAFU. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
— Binance (@binance) August 17, 2022
Binance also assured users that despite the freeze, funds remain in the security asset fund for SAFU users. The fund was created by Binance in 2018 to compensate customers who were hacked on the exchange. The Fund holds 10% of all transaction fees. After questions about the fund from Twitter users, the exchange quickly clarified the purpose of the SAFU fund.
Here's everything you need to know about SAFU. https://t.co/umGZ0xv1rl pic.twitter.com/cq3TCPVBfm
— Binance (@binance) August 17, 2022
This comes just days after Binance recovered and froze nearly $450,000 worth of stolen assets from the Curve Finance hack. In June, Binance also halted Bitcoin (BTC) withdrawals due to massive network congestion. Binance is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange and performs nearly 3.224 million transactions per day.
Other crypto companies also halt withdrawals
The highly volatile market has caused great chaos for crypto companies. Cryptocurrency exchange Celsius also stopped withdrawing funds on May 6, and later declared bankruptcy.
Besides, Coinbase has announced that it will pause the deposits and withdrawals of Ethereum (ETH) and ERC-20 tokens during the upcoming Ethereum Merge in September.
Market volatility has prompted some hodlers to reconsider where they store their digital assets. Many people are turning to hardware wallets.
According to a July report, the global hardware wallet market will outpace the global exchange market. The predicted value is $1.1 billion by 2027, while the exchange market will reach a value of $675 million by 2028.
