Binance Temporarily Suspends ETH Token Withdrawals Amid ATH transactions for Binance Smart Chain(BSC)

Binance has temporarily suspended Ethereum and ERC-20 withdrawals citing a network congestion issue behind the decision. Ethereum network has been reeling with scalability and rising gas fee issues despite its market price reaching new all-time-highs. The scalability issues have made most of the defi protocols nearly non-usable owing to the rising gas fee and network congestion.

#Binance has temporarily suspended withdrawals of $ETH and Ethereum-based tokens in order to address a congestion issue.

Rest assured funds are #SAFU and we apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Updates to follow.

— Binance (@binance) February 19, 2021

Ethereum’s issues have worked in Binance’s favor as its native chain Binance Smart Chain (BSC) has become the primary choice of defi traders as well as spot traders to settle ERC-20 transactions. The soaring popularity of the Binance chain is taking away the market share of Ethereum as BSC recorded nearly 2x the volume of the ETH chain yesterday.

Binance Smart Chain’s popularity has also made many protocols to integrate BSC until the Ethereum network’s gas fee woes come down. The temporary restriction on ETH also called for the timing of the halt as the Ethereum network’s volume has been quite low over the past couple of days.

Ethereum Proponents Compare Binance Move to Robinhood

Ryan Adams, a crypto analyst, and a big-time Ethereum proponent compared Binance’s move to that of Robinhood claiming Binance has intentionally halted the withdrawals to help Binance Smart Chain. 

CZ created another rigged casino and people are falling for it cause he’s calling it DeFi.

GTFO.

This isn’t the crypto revolution. This is RobinHood. https://t.co/2nTeIoBafZ

— Ryan Sean Adams – rsa.eth ???? (@RyanSAdams) February 19, 2021

While there is no proof at present to substantiate these claims as Binance has a stellar reputation and is known for maintaining a level of transparency with the customers. The surging volume on BSC along with several defi protocols looking to integrate BSC a network issue with the BSC chain would have been a more likely scenario. However, the exchange has now resumed the withdrawal services.

Withdrawals resumed, thank you for your patience. https://t.co/xC10Vc93Z0

— Binance (@binance) February 19, 2021

The rise in popularity of BSC hasn’t gone down well with ETH proponents who believe BSC is a centralized chain and thus there is no comparison of the two.