Binance Temporarily Paused Bitcoin Transactions Over Network Congestion, Also Faces Government Scrutiny

CoinDesk reports that Binance "temporarily paused bitcoin withdrawals Sunday morning U.S. time as the Bitcoin blockchain became overwhelmed with pending transactions and sky-high fees." The company resumed withdrawals within two hours of its initial Twitter posting about the withdrawals.

On-chain data shows that there are nearly 400,000 unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions, which is higher than anything seen during the bull runs of 2018 and 2021. The average transaction fee has also doubled since March, pushing it to a two-year high. The current transaction fee is just over $8, a 309% change from a year ago.
In an earlier CoinDesk article, an executive at Luxor Technologies, a full-stack Bitcoin mining pool, blamed the rising fees on the adoption of the new BRC-20 token standard, a new way to "inscribe" additional data during transactions. But meanwhile, an anonymous reader shared another report from Mashable about Binance: Bloomberg reported that the crypto exchange (currently the world's largest) is facing a U.S. Department of Justice probe over possibly allowing Russians to move money in a way that would violate U.S. sanctions... It's worth noting that no formal accusation has been made against Binance, as this is just a probe. It may be some time before accusations manifest — if they manifest at all. In 2021, Binance was under a similar investigation related to possible money laundering.
But another Reuters article adds that Bloomberg's sources "also said that Binance is discussing the possibility of settling with the Department of Justice regarding previous allegations that the exchange was also used to move money to circumvent U.S. sanctions against Iran."

And elsewhere, Reuters reports: Israel has seized around 190 crypto accounts at crypto exchange Binance since 2021 , including two it said were linked to Islamic State and dozens of others it said were owned by Palestinian firms connected to the Islamist Hamas group, documents released by the country's counter-terror authorities show...

In a blog post after its publication, Binance said that Reuters was "deliberately leaving out critical facts." The exchange has been "working closely with international counter-terrorism authorities" on the seizures, Binance said. "With regard to the specific organizations mentioned in the article, it's important to clarify that bad actors don't register accounts under the names of their criminal enterprises," it said...

Under Israeli law, the country's defense minister can order the seizure and confiscation of assets that the ministry deems related to terrorism... The seizures by Israel's National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing highlight how governments are targeting crypto companies in their efforts to prevent illegal activity. Binance, founded in 2017 by CEO Changpeng Zhao, says on its website it reviews information requests from governments and law enforcement agencies on a case-by-case basis, disclosing information as legally required.

Binance has also said it checks users for connections to terrorism and has "continued to invest tremendous resources to enhance its compliance program," it told U.S. senators in March in response to their requests for information on Binance's regulatory compliance and finances.

Wrong headline

[GeekWithAKnife]

"Shitty crypto exchange does shitty crypto exchange things." TFTFY

This isn't really shitty crypto exchange

[rsilvergun]

Doing shitty things this is the Bitcoin Network basically collapsing under its own weight. It's going to probably get worse and worse as regulation pushes people out of the crypto markets. These systems use so much infrastructure and electricity that you can't really run them without legitimate businesses. But since crypto has no legitimate use as of yet and none on the horizon what's most likely going to happen is that crypto will be pushed out of the United States and America and the legitimate banking sy

Your coins are gone

[klipclop]

That's what I'm guessing!

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Scammers gotta scam.

In related news ...

[fahrbot-bot]

Binance Temporarily Pausesd [sic] Bitcoin Transactions Over Network Congestion

Credit cards say, "Hold my beer." Cash replies, "No problem."

The crypto fad is over.

[xack]

So are meme stocks with BBBY delisted and bankrupt. It was fun to speculate about "alternate currencies" back in the early 2010s, but now people have shown their true greed when it came to crypto.

Re:

[Baron_Yam]

>now people have shown their true greed when it came to crypto

It took me all of a week from first finding out about Bitcoin to finding out about all the fundamental issues with it. It was interesting to stick with it through a few more weeks of casual learning about finance (and I already had a strong DB background) and figure out that Bitcoin was a) an interesting solution to a math problem, b) a really awful solution to incorrectly perceived issues with the world's financial systems (not that they're

Re:

[ctilsie242]

As someone who saw cryptocurrencies in the 1990s, when people started talking about Bitcoin + blockchain, then when it became the non-stop conversation for months at a time, it became to me like a villain in some Captain Planet episode, burning energy and adding to CO2 in the air for nothing, with people addicted to it, mocking anyone who questions it with snide responses to it (HFSP, etc.)

Of course, the fact that actually protecting wallet private keys was a joke, and a bad one, made it something I just av

Re:

[Admiral Krunch]

What amazes me is that BTC is still holding its value. Is this what Russia, China, Iran, and other countries who don't like the US are going to use as a "de-dollarization" currency?

They're going to use Yuan if they ever change from $US. Those other countries' economies are tiny by comparison.
And China hates Bitcoin anyway, total non starter.

Re:

[coop247]

What amazes me is that BTC is still holding its value. Is this what Russia, China, Iran, and other countries who don't like the US are going to use as a "de-dollarization" currency?

Despite all the talk of "decentralization" the entire market is highly centralized and has very very little legitimate market activity. BTC has been propped up by Binance "no fee" trading that allows for rampant wash trading. Also a handful of whales have the ability to prop up the price and do anything and everything illegal to keep it inflated. Every time the price starts to fall Tether magically makes a billion tethers appear out of thin air and the price pumps.

The entire system is a lie and scam.

Re:

[coop247]

I was interested in the whole "web 3" thing about two years ago and spent a few months watching videos and setting up a development environment, the whole thing, solidity, hardhat, etc.

As I continued to dig in and build some small contracts, I realized the entire thing didn't DO anything. All the functions were just moving around magic jelly beans, you couldn't do anything useful. Like nothing could interact with the real world at all, just trading made up tokens.

Thats why every single, and I mean EVER

Re:

[Kaenneth]

"No one goes there, it's too crowded"

Re:

[bubblyceiling]

Oh my friend. The game has just started. The DTC has proved they have more shares than the float in the bankruptcy docs. Just by themselves. And only half the voting power

Re:

[sound+vision]

My Telegram account handle got on some scammers' list in 2021. Every few months (sometimes more) they would add me into crypto-spam groups. Or a mysterious, beautiful woman (sometimes a well-to-do man leaning on a Lamborghini) would send me a personal message, leading very soon into a crypto pitch.

I hadn't heard from them at all in 2023 - until today. Looks like the get-rich-quick scheme of choice this year is something to do with ChatGPT. What exactly, I can't tell, the chat's name is in Chinese except for

This is how you know it's gone mainstream

[DeplorableCodeMonkey]

But another Reuters article adds that Bloomberg's sources "also said that Binance is discussing the possibility of settling with the Department of Justice regarding previous allegations that the exchange was also used to move money to circumvent U.S. sanctions against Iran."

You know it's gone mainstream when Binance has joined the list of companies like HSBC which can engage in very large scale financial crimes and "settle" rather than be so thoroughly subject to arrest and search/seizure warrants that the company is effectively decapitated.

But this is why when I see neckbeards talking about crypto being "good for nothing but crime" my response is "oh sweet summer child, you ignorant cunt, you have no idea how deep mainstream banking is involved with guys who make the crap that gets traded on Tor w/ crypto look like traffic ticket level offenses."

We know exactly how bad the banking system is

[rsilvergun]

But we can't really do anything about it to speak of. Stopping crypto before it becomes so large that it becomes a brand new threat to our economic fortunes seems like a good idea though. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The craptocurrency ship has sailed

[gosso920]

Kiss your money goodbye, suckers.

"it checks users for connections to terrorism"

[Petersko]

If you're going to make a claim like that, I wanna know exactly how you're doing it.

Re:

[glum64]

I am not aware of the details, but backtracking is involved. IFF the organisation X is recognised as a terrorist group (or as one that facilitates terrorist activities) and monetary devices (checking accounts, credit or debit cards, etc.) Y of X are known to law enforcement then crypto exchange queries law enforcement along the lines `The user Z requests to exchange crypto to national currency and withdraw it using Y'. If true, the account of Z gets seized by the government (by the order of the court of l

Re:

[Admiral Krunch]

If you're going to make a claim like that, I wanna know exactly how you're doing it.

Hey chatGPT, make me a function that uses a list of know bad people and check if this person has sent money to or recieved money from anyone on that list.

Re:

[emmanuel.charpentier]

It's called KYC => Know Your Customer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Not your bitcoin

[Currently_Defacating]

If they can freeze transactions, you don't actually have any bitcoins.

Decentralized exchanges exist for a reason, centralized crypto i.e. Binance is fundamentally bad.

Don't let centralized crypto be another 'so many people tried to tell me, but now it's too late.'

Re:

[viperidaenz]

You forgot the 1 hour confirmation time too

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

It's only an imaginary problem because nobody in their right mind attempts to carry out $2 transactions in BTC.

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

Um, thanks for agreeing with me? Even the BTC shills know you can't transact with it which is why they call it a "store of value".

Tick tock, next block

[FuzzMaster]

Not sure who this binance character is, but blocks are currently coming in less than a minute behind schedule for this difficulty adjustment period. We'll make a modification for the next one if necessary and they will get confirmed every ten minutes or so, on average.

Carry on.

BTC sucks

[DrMrLordX]

Bitcoin has never been good for carrying out transactions. LN isn't saving anyone either, apparently. Interesting how when you really need to carry out a transaction in BTC, such as from one exchange to another or from your wallet to an exchange (or vice versa), that LN never saves you. It's always someone else, somewhere else, using it.

Why would anyone mess with crypto

[sethmeisterg]

when you're at the mercy of these changes who can clearly do whatever they want with respect to slowing / not allowing you to complete transactions, restrict access to your capital, etc. Crazy. This is an "industry" that should clearly be heavily regulated.

It's terrible

[Jacob86]

Thanks, it was helpful for me.