Binance recently moved about $4.4 billion worth of Bitcoin between its digital-asset wallets. This move was discovered by Julio Moreno, CryptoQuant’s Head of Research, who analyzed on-chain data.
The transfer occurred on Sunday, and Binance completed it in two tranches of 117,000 and 40,000 coins.
However, the exchange halted Bitcoin withdrawals twice over the weekend due to network congestion. According to Binance, the issue was caused by a glut of pending transactions that weren’t added to the Bitcoin blockchain because of their low gas fees.
As a result, the platform temporarily stopped Bitcoin withdrawals for several hours late on Sunday and early on Monday.
Binance has now resumed Bitcoin withdrawals and adjusted its fees to prevent a similar occurrence in the future. The exchange is also working on enabling BTC Lightning Network withdrawals to help during such situations.
The surge in fees is attributed to the increasing adoption of Ordinal inscriptions, which are the equivalent of NFTs minted on the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin recorded a new all-time high for the number of daily transactions last week, with nearly 78,000 more than its previous peak during the top of the 2017 bull run.
Binance’s 24-hour trading volume has reached over $7.6 billion, more than eight times the next-largest crypto exchange, Coinbase. Meanwhile, Bitcoin is currently trading at $27,913.64, down by 3.4% over the past 24 hours.
