The crypto currency exchange said its decision was based on congestion issues affecting Bitcoin’s network

Crypto currency exchange Binance temporarily stopped Bitcoin withdrawals on its platform on Sunday, preventing the biggest token in terms of market cap from leaving the major platform by trading volume.

The crypto currency exchange said its decision was based on congestion issues affecting Bitcoin’s network, further stating that the exchange was presently working on a solution to resume withdrawals at the earliest.

During the disruption, speculation about the reason was rampant on Crypto Twitter. One big Twitter Spaces discussion ran the gamut from Ordinal-centred technical theories to global political conspiracies.

The crypto currency exchange reported an hour later that Bitcoin withdrawals had restarted.

Bitcoin was marginally in the green at one point, less than 1 per cent higher to nearly $29k, as per CoinGecko. In the meantime, crypto exchange OKX announced Bitcoin deposit and withdrawal services were working fine, in spite of high transaction costs.

Before they are added to Bitcoin’s blockchain, transactions are broadcast to the network’s mempool where they wait to be chosen by miners and inserted into Bitcoin’s next block. At present, a considerable accumulation of Bitcoin transactions is driving transaction fees higher.

As of Sunday afternoon, the total number of unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions in the network’s mempool was about 395k, as per mempool.space. On April 26, it was 56,500, as per Blockchain.com.

At the same time, transaction fees on Bitcoin were sky-high. As per data from YCharts, Bitcoin transaction fees hit their highest levels in around two years on Friday, averaging $9.62 per transaction.

On Saturday, transaction fees averaged nearly $8.84, indicating they were trending back down. Still, it represented a more than 500 per cent rise compared to six months ago, when Bitcoin transactions averaged nearly $1.45.

The increase in congestion and higher transaction fees coincides with a sharp increase in the number of inscriptions made via Ordinals since people use the protocol for minting non-fungible tokens-like assets on Bitcoin to create and trade fungible, BRC-20 tokens.