Despite the huge withdrawals and the network congestion, Binance had since resumed Bitcoin operations during the early Asian market on Monday.
The most regulated centralized exchange with the largest daily traded volume Binance temporarily closed Bitcoin withdrawals on Sunday due to network congestion. In a rare blockchain moment, Bitcoin block 788695 contained transaction fees greater than the block subsidy. Meaning some Bitcoin miners earned the entire block reward on Sunday. According to the on-chain insight platform Glassnode, the Bitcoin network experienced extremely high demand for block space, driven by BRC-20 tokens, which utilize text-based inscriptions and ordinals.
“A few recent blocks have seen tremendous total fees paid of 5.87 $BTC, approaching 94 percent of the 6.25 $BTC block subsidy. Our mempool is currently full, and purging transactions approaching the 50sat/vbtye fee rate band,” Glassnode noted.
On May 7, the Bitcoin mempool was clogged with more than 400k transactions on the pipeline. According to market aggregate data provided by Coinglass, more than 177,511 Bitcoins have been withdrawn from Binance in the past 24 hours, leaving the exchange with a balance of about 402,014 coins.
Despite the huge withdrawals and the network congestion, Binance had since resumed Bitcoin operations during the early Asian market on Monday.
$BTC withdrawals are now resumed on #Binance.
Thank you for your patience and we apologize for any inconvenience.
— Binance (@binance) May 7, 2023
Binance has been urged by other key players, including the OKX exchange, to implement the Bitcoin lightning network to help reduce network downtimes. Moreover, other crypto exchanges that have implemented the Bitcoin lightning network were not affected by Sunday’s congestion.
Binance and Bitcoin Market Outlook
The high Bitcoin congestion over the weekend comes at a time the asset has recorded significant resistance around $29k. Trading around $28.2k on Monday, Bitcoin price has consolidated around the same level since the breakout in mid-March. The level around $30k has acted as support for the Bitcoin bulls severally since 2021’s bull market. However, this is the first time that Bitcoin price revisited the same level since its capitulation to $15k last year.
As a result, Bitcoin price is likely to face intensified pressure to break above $30k and beyond. Currently, Bitcoin’s market dominance is standing around 48.5 percent, a resistance level that has held since May 2021. A breakout above this level could see money flow to Bitcoin increase in the coming weeks.
On the other hand, a lot of altcoins that are denominated in Bitcoin could bleed despite the rise of new meme coins.
Binance has held the top exchange by daily traded volume for several years despite the heightened bear market. The exchange is, however, fighting for regulatory approvals in the United States as the SEC among other agencies hunts down its business.
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