On 7 May 2023 and 8 May 2023, Binance faced a surge of pending transactions caused by the company’s failure to offer miners a high enough reward to log the trades on the blockchain. As a result, the cryptocurrency exchange decided to halt bitcoin withdrawals for several hours on 8 May, a decision motivated by heavy volumes and a surge in processing fees.
However, the company resumed the withdrawals later in the same day and announced that it adjusted its fees to prevent a similar occurrence. The halt affected the price of Bitcoin and caused it to plunge slightly. According to cnbc.com, the cryptocurrency was down about 1% and reached a price of USD 28,162.
Binance officials cited by the same source talked about the recent event and emphasised that their set fees did not anticipate the surge in bitcoin network gas fees, but that they did replace the pending bitcoin withdrawal transactions with a higher fee so that they can be picked up by mining pools. They further explained that if the withdrawal amount is large, the gas fee required to process the transaction may also be large, especially during times of high network congestion.
As for the reason behind this surge in withdrawals, the company is still investigating and is attempting to gather more information.
In recent months, Binance.US expressed its willingness to purchase USD 1 billion worth of bankrupt cryptocurrency brokerage Voyager Digital assets but has decided to withdraw from the deal in May 2023. Even though Voyager, the Voyager Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors and the U.S. government have reached an agreement on 19 April 2023 for the acquisition to commence, Binance.US decided to terminate the asset purchase agreement citing the hostile and uncertain regulatory climate in the US.
Voyager and the Voyager Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors expressed their disappointment that the deal fell through via Twitter and revealed that they are currently investigating potential claims against Binance.US.
In March 2023, Binance has joined the FIDO Alliance and took measures to implement passkey technology. According to Binance, by joining the FIDO Alliance, the company is looking to improve the security and convenience of its users.
To improve security, Binance wants to implement passkeys, which are based on FIDO standards and act as strong, phishing-resistant password replacements. Passkeys allow users to quickly and safely sign in across multiple sites, apps, and devices with local biometric authorisation.
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