Bitcoin (BTC) price is down today as ongoing congestion frustrates traders and pressures market sentiment.
Binance FUD drags Bitcoin down
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows Bitcoin trading below $28,000 into the May 8 Wall Street open.
The largest cryptocurrency continues to experience a dip in sentiment after transaction fees hit their highest levels ever and the mempool became almost 98% full.
Mass transactions spamming the Bitcoin network lies at the center of the problem, market participants believe. The impact was worsened, however, by largest global exchange Binance repeatedly halting BTC withdrawals.
Blaming congestion for the outages, Binance created a backlog of withdrawals, which served to worsen already nervous market sentiment. A subsequent tweet confirmed that the backlog had been cleared. All pending $BTC withdrawal transactions have now been processed.
BTC/USD nonetheless stayed suppressed, the day’s lows standing at $27,617 at the time of writing and corresponding to a drop of 7.4% versus local highs seen over the weekend.
Binance’s in-house token, Binance Coin (BNB), matched Bitcoin’s 24-hour losses, down around 2.4% to trade near $315.
Whether supportive or not, traders were quick to agree with Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao, when the latter called the market reaction to the withdrawal pauses FUD. Binance closed Bitcoin withdrawals and users immediately panic sold #Bitcoin and bought Tethers at a premium.
This article was originally published by CryptoNews.