Binance resumes withdrawals as many retail crypto investors monitor exchanges

Major crypto exchange Binance has announced that it had resumed Bitcoin withdrawals after more than three hours amid extreme market volatility. 

In an update during what many are calling cryptocurrency’s “Black Monday,” Binance said on its website the exchange would be processing Bitcoin (BTC) network withdrawals within “the next couple of hours” following the resumption of activity. The platform announced Monday that it had temporarily paused BTC withdrawals, with CEO Changpeng Zhao saying on Twitter that all user funds were “SAFU.”

While BTC trading activity on Binance seems to have been restored, withdrawals for users on Celsius have remained frozen since Sunday, when the platform announced such actions put it “in a better position to honor, over time, its withdrawal obligations.” As of the time of publication, Celsius has not offered any indication as to if or when normal operations will resume.

The decision from two major trading platforms to halt Bitcoin withdrawals came amid extreme volatility across the crypto market. The BTC price has fallen to levels not seen since December 2020 — dipping under $23,000 on Monday — while Cointelegraph reported the price of Ether (ETH) dropped to as low as $950 on Uniswap following a whale dumping 93,000 ETH within six hours.

Many on social media seem to be waiting for the other shoe to drop, as it were, among other major crypto exchanges. Some have expressed concerns that Coinbase — with its roughly 98 million verified users — could go offline amid market volatility or otherwise announce the suspension of withdrawals, given the exchange’s history of outages.

Related: Tether: Celsius crisis has no impact on USDT reserves

United States-based crypto exchange Kraken, while not announcing any similar actions on withdrawals, reported funding delays for some tokens, including Solana (SOL). In March, the exchange started allowing users to withdraw funds from accounts using the Lightning Network. Kraken Bitcoin strategist Pierre Rochard said that the platform’s Bitcoin on-chain and Lightning withdrawals were “fully operational” as of Monday amid the market volatility while adding: “holding your own keys is best practice.”

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