TL;DR Breakdown
- Binance exchange has suspended ETH withdrawals for the second time in days.
- Ethereum gas fees have reached $30 per transaction.
- Ethereum seems to have taken a huge hit during a recent market correction.
Binance seems to be running into several issues with its network lately. Although some network issues have been experienced in the past during high-trading periods, there seems to be a lot of them this early in 2021. Apparently, Binance says that its suspension of withdrawals of select crypto tokens is only a result of network congestion.
A few hours ago, Binance took ETH and ETH-based withdrawals offline, giving the same reason. This event was announced by the exchange in a tweet. However, it was quick to assure investors that all their funds are SAFU. The exchange has been known to have measures in place that ensure that investor funds are not affected in the event of a catastrophic exchange mishap or attack.
Second time in a week
Today’s network mishap is the second in a span of three days where Binance resorted to suspending ETH withdrawals. The most recent case, preceding today’s, was the Binance ETH suspension that happened on the 19th of February.
ETH gas fees soaring
These network congestions and exchange suspensions happen at a time when Ethereum transaction fees are hurting traders. At the moment, ETH gas fees have reached a whopping $30 per transaction, something that a lot of people aren’t happy about. The high fees seem to obscure the crypto’s purpose as one of the means to detach from centralized financial systems. Some traders are already reverting back to centralized systems to save their money.
Meanwhile, Ethereum seems to have taken a huge hit during a recent market correction. It has lost by over 20% in the last 24 hours. The crypto is currently trading at around $1,420, down from the ATH of $2,040 of 20th February. A lot of positions have been liquidated in the process as the market cap drops to around $160.7 billion.
Update: ETH withdrawals back on Binance
While the recurrent exchange network issues have angered many, Binance exchange seems to be working hard to solve the problems as they happen. About an hour after the exchange suspended ETH and ETH-based ERC token withdrawals, a follow-up tweet in the thread was sent out, assuring users that the issues were fixed.
