Binance is spamming mempool

[Lucius]

Who remembers what the circumstances were the last time CZ did the same thing - it seems to me that he also chose a moment that was not exactly the best?

Regardless of the fact that it is the legitimate right of everyone to create as many transactions as they want, it could still be done in a less extreme way, and considering everything that has been happening in the last few days, what CZ is doing can certainly raise suspicions that it is not about ordinary consolidation, but trying to hide something or cause even greater panic.

I found a similar topic from 2019 -> ~80 MB transactions with 1 s/b fee were just injected into the mempool

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[NeuroticFish]

I believe that the image is actually showing the Minimum Withdrawal amount, not the Withdrawal fee, which on the Bitcoin network is 0.0002 BTCs (3,39 $).

I've made the full/correct image with headers too, using data taken now from https://www.binance.com/en/fee/cryptoFee

I’ve gone over some of the recent achieved pages on TheWayBackMachine, and at least since May 2022, BTC fees are the same on the Bitcoin Network (no so on other chains):

The way those pages load up are kinda strange, I fear they may be accessing something from Binance actually, but I don't have the tools to check that.

[stompix]

The way those pages load up are kinda strange, I fear they may be accessing something from Binance actually, but I don't have the tools to check that.

I know why I make screenshots and save them, seems like also the archive.is sucks at loading pages.
No header but the columns are easy to guess, so at least in April, the fees were the same!

~ can't wait to see a similar move from the two big "spammers", Coinbase and Binance, but in the latter's case I doubt they will do such a thing, they are using the fees as a motivation to have people use their shitty coin.

Seems that neither the fees nor the other thing in that post did change.

[NotATether]

Meanwhile, they bump their withdrawal fee to absolutely ridiculous levels - 100,000 sats! - to encourage people either not to withdraw at all, or to "withdraw" on one of their centralized scam IOU chains which are not back by real bitcoin at all. I've spoken many times in the past about how Binance's withdrawal fees are literal robbery, and now they've doubled them!

Binance doesn't want my KYC (as did the fallen FTX), so good riddance with them.

Time to reboot discussions for alternative layer 2 protocols, or even better, to work on advancements in technology speed and space capacity that would enable a frighteningly fast & decentralized L1 blockchain. (When ARM?)

[Mahanton]

It's either prevention for mass withdrawals, or the community became more paranoid after the second biggest exchange has scammed the community. For me, it's probably just coincidence. But if it's as a prevention for another exchange "bank run", then I believe the result would be a positive, not only for the exchanges, but for the community as well, no? We don't want another crash.

Paranoid indeed even with those veteran or old timer here on crypto space cant really be able to ignore about being paranoid because we've seen already seen the worst thing that happened which it did really
result into crash. Its totally that the truth that funds is never been safe to be stored on exchanges and now that we've seen these exchange drama then it cant really be avoided not
for you to take action and i dont know about that spamming mempool which it cant really be that possible for a single entity would able to flood out the network
just to stop the massive withdrawal.It is really just too obvious that the community will really be having this impression.

[coinerer]

Or is he trying to combine his coins for when people start to massively withdraw from his scam exchange so he can charge his users massive fees

I just checked their current BTC withdraw fee and found it's 0.001BTC (about $16.9). I'm sure the fee was 0.0005BTC or lower few months ago. It's unlikely they perform consolidation with such high fees, so your speculation could be right.

It seems that Binance is trying to do some tricks now and they are trying to take everything in their hands. And since the bankruptcy of FTX they have got another big opportunity to do their job and they want to dominate the market alone. And they are trying to increase their reserve fund by taking huge profits from the current market using several other strategies including high Withdraw fees so that they never end up in the same situation as FTX.  CZ_Binance is a very smart guy

[tranthidung]

I just checked their current BTC withdraw fee and found it's 0.001BTC (about $16.9). I'm sure the fee was 0.0005BTC or lower few months ago. It's unlikely they perform consolidation with such high fees, so your speculation could be right.

Yesterday, their withdrawal fees are much lower:

• 0.0005 BTC for Bitcoin Legacy
• 0.00025 BTC for Bitcoin Segwit

It means they increased withdrawal fees to two times (Legacy) and four times (Segwit) after spamming the mempool (assume it's actually Binance spam, not from others).

Wayback machine recorded it on 13th November as follows

• https://web.archive.org/web/20221113220344/https://www.binance.com/en/fee/cryptoFee

[Dave1]

Oh ok, that's why I was surprised yesterday that when I try to withdraw using my Electrum, I'm getting errors message that I need to upgrade or increased my fees, which I haven't touch for a while, but yesterday it says the mempool is full and my fee is too low for miners to pick it up.

Not good Binance, not sure what's cooking behind, but they might give a wrong impression on their users for doing consolidation as the timing is bad.

[tranthidung]

Oh ok, that's why I was surprised yesterday that when I try to withdraw using my Electrum, I'm getting errors message that I need to upgrade or increased my fees

If you use Electrum, you will never have to make any withdrawal which is more relevant to exchanges. On exchanges, you will have to submit your withdrawal request, wait for their approval before they proceed it for you.

With Electrum that is a SPV wallet but non custodial, you simply broadcast your transaction to Bitcoin network, with fee rate is chosen by yourself. You don't need approval from Electrum wallet but have to get confirmations from miners.

[Wind_FURY]

The massive waiting transactions in mempool only occured in less than 24 hours ago. Because yesterday, mempool is very clear and we can move bitcoin with 3 satoshis to 5 satoshis

https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC%20(default%20mempool),24h,weight

Binance (if it is real) did choose a good time to create panic on newbies. They will feel more panic when their transactions need too long time to get a first confirmation. Taking this congestion, I remind people to use an opt-in Replace-by-Fee (RBF) for their transaction. So if their transactions stucked, they can bump the fee.

It's understandable that plebs like us would be more paranoid after the crash of FTX, the owners scamming their own users, but we shouldn't panic. It's just mere coincidence that Binance consolidated their wallets. Why would Binance want to cause another panic? They definitely DON'T want a bank run starting in their own service. It's what the government wants.

It's either prevention for mass withdrawals, or the community became more paranoid after the second biggest exchange has scammed the community. For me, it's probably just coincidence. But if it's as a prevention for another exchange "bank run", then I believe the result would be a positive, not only for the exchanges, but for the community as well, no? We don't want another crash.

It is not to prevent mass withdrawals. Exchanges already charge very expensive withdrawal fee on users. Their fees are fixed and expensive because they over charge users.

Binance did not reduce or increase their withdrawal fee on Bitcoin. https://www.binance.com/en/fee/cryptoFee

I know.

[NeuroticFish]

Even so, it's still rather expensive and discriminate towards user who have SegWit address.

Some people on Twitter are implying that maybe Binance is leaving behind the legacy addresses and moves everything to pure SegWit.
If it's so, it may be great, although the timing was awfully chosen.

By my calculations the mempool may clear up before Monday. Let's see if other dramas will surface until then.

[o_e_l_e_o]

It's understandable that plebs like us would be more paranoid after the crash of FTX

Just want to point out I'm not paranoid about anything, because I don't store a single satoshi of my money on a centralized exchange. Every exchange in the world can go bankrupt if they want - my bitcoin will be just fine.

It's just mere coincidence that Binance consolidated their wallets.

I don't think it is. Binance started to publish their "proof of assets" bullshit last week. Then it all went silent. Perhaps they are scrambling to consolidate everything they can because right now they don't actually have proof of reserves. Or perhaps they are also having a liquidity crisis due to mass withdrawals, and are rushing to refill their withdrawal wallets. They could have done this gradually over the last several months and paid 1 sat/vbyte for it all, but instead they choose to do it all right now to do it and spend a huge amount on unnecessary fees to get it done? Not a coincidence.

[hZti]

Even so, it's still rather expensive and discriminate towards user who have SegWit address.

Some people on Twitter are implying that maybe Binance is leaving behind the legacy addresses and moves everything to pure SegWit.
If it's so, it may be great, although the timing was awfully chosen.

By my calculations the mempool may clear up before Monday. Let's see if other dramas will surface until then.

If that is really the case it would just prove that there are idiots working there. For one the timing is bad and for two they are spamming the whole network instead of doing it over a longer period of time.

[DaveF]

It's understandable that plebs like us would be more paranoid after the crash of FTX

Just want to point out I'm not paranoid about anything, because I don't store a single satoshi of my money on a centralized exchange. Every exchange in the world can go bankrupt if they want - my bitcoin will be just fine.

It's just mere coincidence that Binance consolidated their wallets.

I don't think it is. Binance started to publish their "proof of assets" bullshit last week. Then it all went silent. Perhaps they are scrambling to consolidate everything they can because right now they don't actually have proof of reserves. Or perhaps they are also having a liquidity crisis due to mass withdrawals, and are rushing to refill their withdrawal wallets. They could have done this gradually over the last several months and paid 1 sat/vbyte for it all, but instead they choose to do it all right now to do it and spend a huge amount on unnecessary fees to get it done? Not a coincidence.

It could also be because as I said earlier their coding is so bad, they don't know what they have. Lots and lots of wallets all over the place, a database out of sync with them, knowing they have 'enough' in cold storage but now they are all in a panic because they have to be sure. I know it's an old saying but never attribute malice to something if incompetence is just a likely.

"Real" financial institutions have more security and programmers working for them then binance has staff.

They have been hacked several times, had the issue on the cross chain bridge last month. And so on.

They might have the funds, they might not, they might not even know....

-Dave
 

[imamusma]

I rechecked Binance website and you're correct. It looks like Binance doesn't show whole column if your browser width is too small and they didn't "freeze" the column name which caused mistake. The actual fee are 0.0002BTC for "Bitcoin" and 0.0005BTC for "BTC(SegWit)". Even so, it's still rather expensive and discriminate towards user who have SegWit address.

Of course, 0.0005 for a withdrawal to SegWit btc address seems very expensive for those who only have small amounts of bitcoin. The withdrawal fee is equivalent to $8.27 for the current bitcoin price, obviously it is very expensive and seems so discriminatory for SegWit.

The only thing that is going to be popular nowadays among small traders not to withdraw their bitcoin from binance is the expensive withdrawal fees. Really, I would think this is not the right time to withdraw $100 in bitcoin to my electrum wallet.

[tygeade]

Even so, it's still rather expensive and discriminate towards user who have SegWit address.

Some people on Twitter are implying that maybe Binance is leaving behind the legacy addresses and moves everything to pure SegWit.
If it's so, it may be great, although the timing was awfully chosen.

By my calculations the mempool may clear up before Monday. Let's see if other dramas will surface until then.

If that is the case then I do agree that it would be a great deal. I understand that there are still a few people who rather use the legacy ones, but they need their hands to be pushed in order to either move to segwit, or just not be involved with the mainstream crypto anymore.

There are still some people who like to use monero and such privacy coins as well and want to hide their wealth too but that doesn't mean that they would be good at it neither. Which is why I believe that we shouldn't be really focusing on those people and look at what the general public uses. Segwit is what almost everyone is using and Binance should promote that a lot more.

[PrivacyG]

It's understandable that plebs like us would be more paranoid after the crash of FTX, the owners scamming their own users, but we shouldn't panic. It's just mere coincidence that Binance consolidated their wallets. Why would Binance want to cause another panic? They definitely DON'T want a bank run starting in their own service. It's what the government wants.

I rather think it is no coincidence when it comes to Binance.  They sure know what they are doing and it is not the first time they are doing something that logically triggers panic.

If bitcoin had ever bothered to increase onchain transaction capacity, this would be a non issue,
but since btc is limited, people start complaining when it's transaction network is used.

If the people wanted the change, Bitcoin would of had the change by now.  Is this not the reason Bitcoin split into Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash years ago?  Everything happens here with consensus of the community, and while I also wish Bitcoin had smaller fees and an increased capacity, the majority decided they want Bitcoin to stay Bitcoin.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

[franky1]

If the people wanted the change, Bitcoin would of had the change by now.  Is this not the reason Bitcoin split into Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash years ago?  Everything happens here with consensus of the community, and while I also wish Bitcoin had smaller fees and an increased capacity, the majority decided they want Bitcoin to stay Bitcoin.

majority didnt.. mandatory code activation decided along with a coalition of economic nodes(exchanges and corporate sponsored devs). and it was that small(in numbers, but large in social popularity) that caused the split..
try to read bitcoin blockdata of july/august 2017
try to read bip and code.. then you will learn what actually happened

[tranthidung]

I believe that the image is actually showing the Minimum Withdrawal amount, not the Withdrawal fee, which on the Bitcoin network is 0.0002 BTCs (3,39 $).

Good finding and previously I did not notice it too. Just thought the last information in the table is for Withdrawal fee for both horizontal and vertical views!

If you use mobile and see it horizontally or vertically, you will have different tables with different formats and details. I can confirm by making screenshots below.

Binance did not change their withdrawal fee for both Legacy and Segwit addresses but their spam on mempool in this period is suspicious.

Just want to point out I'm not paranoid about anything, because I don't store a single satoshi of my money on a centralized exchange. Every exchange in the world can go bankrupt if they want - my bitcoin will be just fine.

They can go with a hack and an exit that can be a scam exit too. In the past, many exchanges were hacked and shut down a few months later. From Cryptopia to Livecoin exchanges (more definitely).

More information about exchange hacks and exchange graveyard. I want to share a proactive warning  

• Exchange graveyard. FTX is in the list already.
• Hacked Exchanges since 2011

[NeuroticFish]

If bitcoin had ever bothered to increase onchain transaction capacity, this would be a non issue,
but since btc is limited, people start complaining when it's transaction network is used.

Lame.

If you would read around, you would have been seeing this explanation of mine:

It explains how we got there, but doesn't elaborate on what that means for Bitcoin.

I think that a better term would be "congested".
What it means for bitcoin, nothing.
What it means for miners, a bit more income.
What it means for bitcoiners, a bit higher transaction fees if they're in a hurry. If nothing special happens, all this will be gone in less than 5 days.

Also, if you would have been looking on the actual topic, you would have seen that people are trying to see what are Binance's reasons for this move, not actually about the congestion of the mempool.
But instead you chose to be political. And lame.

Some people on Twitter are implying that maybe Binance is leaving behind the legacy addresses and moves everything to pure SegWit.

If that is the case then I do agree that it would be a great deal. I understand that there are still a few people who rather use the legacy ones, but they need their hands to be pushed in order to either move to segwit, or just not be involved with the mainstream crypto anymore.

Indeed, it would be great, although I still have a feeling that this move was meant to hide something under the carpet.

And I don't agree fully with your stance on legacy addresses. They are still good and should still be used by people. Many have old wallets they don't change for security reasons, many have collectible items funded on legacy addresses. Of course, many use legacy simply because they lack certain knowledge, but they will learn. So the individuals still using Legacy are okay imho.
On the other hand services like Binance, services that create a great number of transactions should have been migrated to SegWit long ago. They would have saved quite some money with that. Actually now they should already implement LN. So it's a good step, but already late.