Cryptocurrency market cap falls below $1 trillion, Binance suspends BTC withdrawals

Representative image

Amid a wider market rout, the total market capitalisation of cryptocurrencies has fallen below $1 trillion, levels not seen since February 2021.

The combined market capitalisation of cryptos has fallen to $969 billion, according to data from Coinmarketcap, a drop of about 200 percent from the all-time high market capitalisation of about $3 trillion, seen in last November.

The largest digital currency Bitcoin (BTC) is currently trading at $23,450, down about 13 percent compared to the previous day and about 25 percent in the last week and its market capitalisation has fallen to $455 billion from its peak of $1.3 trillion.

BTC had made an all-time high of $69,000 last November.

The second-largest digital currency, Ethereum, has fallen over 16 percent in a day and is currently trading at $1,210. Its market capitalisation has fallen to $147 billion.

Meanwhile, the CEO of crypto exchange Binance Changpeng Zhao has announced that the exchange is temporarily pausing BTC withdrawals.

“Temporary pause of $BTC withdrawals on #Binance due to a stuck transaction causing a backlog. Should be fixed in ~30 minutes. Will update. Funds are SAFU,” Zhao tweeted.

SAFU is a term that refers to Binance's trading protection fund, the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), which was built during the previous bear market.

In a follow-up tweet, he added that while this was only impacting the Bitcoin network and BTC can still be withdrawn on other networks like BEP-20, the withdrawals would be paused for longer than his initial estimate.

In an official statement, crypto exchange Binance stated that a batch of BTC transactions got stuck due to low TX fees, resulting in a backlog of BTC network withdrawals and as a result, withdrawals on the Bitcoin network have been temporarily suspended on Binance.

“BTC withdrawals on other networks (BEP20 & ERC20) remain open as normal,” the statement added.