Crypto exchange Binance, the world’s largest by volume, suspended withdrawals of the tether (USDT) stablecoin Monday morning during what it called a period of heightened activity.
Withdrawal functionality has since been returned, according to Binance’s website, which previously stated “wallet maintenance, withdrawal suspended” on the page for USDT. A customer service administrator on the platform’s English-language Telegram channel had previously said that the suspension was due to “USDT network congestion.”
In another message, an administrator in the channel said earlier Monday that the “maintenance [is] due to network congestion. Expected date/time cannot be provided. We are fixing it as soon as possible.”
The outage was the second to occur on Binance Monday – the exchange suspended USDT withdrawals earlier in the day, though customers were able to briefly resume withdrawals around 11:33 UTC. Roughly 15 minutes later, withdrawals were suspended again.