Binance And Celsius Native Tokens Are In Freefall After Freezing Customer Withdrawals

I cover cryptocurrency for Forbes Digital Assets.

Jun 13, 2022,11:14am EDT|

Binance and Celsius pause crypto transactions

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Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, and crypto lending platform Celsius are halting transactions in an attempt to stabilize liquidity. The leading cryptocurrency, bitcoin, dropped over 13% on Monday, hovering just above $23,000.

Cayman Islands-based Binance announced its outage early Monday morning through a tweet:

“Binance has temporarily paused #Bitcoin withdrawals on the $BTC network. Meanwhile, you can still withdraw BTC on other networks. This is due to a stuck on-chain transaction. Our team is currently working on a solution and will provide further updates soon.”

The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, originally expected the issue to be fixed within 30 minutes but later tweeted that it would take longer.

Binance’s native token BNB is down almost 14% at press time according to CoinMarketCap.

Binance’s pause comes ten hours after New Jersey-based Celsius halted all transactions Sunday evening. The lending platform tweeted:

“.@CelsiusNetwork is pausing all withdrawals, Swap, and transfers between accounts. Acting in the interest of our community is our top priority. Our operations continue and we will continue to share information with the community. More here:”

The Celsius token CEL plunged almost 50% at its peak according to CoinMarketCap.

News of the simultaneous outages come just days after the SEC inquiry into Celsius and Binance laundering accusations.

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