The latest in crypto: Binance’s bitcoin withdrawals, Coinbase, crypto mining tax
Crypto exchange Binance halted Bitcoin withdrawals earlier today. Let's bring in Yahoo finances Rochelle Okufo who has the details for us. Rochelle how do we see some of the moves on the back of that? Well so we're sort of taking a look at some of the takeaways from the selling action that we've been seeing in some of these cryptos especially Bitcoin. You mentioned Binance the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange suspending those withdrawals and that was due to too many pending transactions according to COZZ. He tweeted that the problem was due to an unexpected surge in Bitcoin transaction fees which had fluctuated an 18x from last month. He also added in it was FUD or Fiat Uncertainty and Doubt also fueling this but that skepticism and speculation about whether it was some of these big crypto whales selling their positions that spread so of course down went Bitcoin and dragged down other tokens with it on a day that already had a mixed picture in general for investors. Now COZZ also tweeting we're aware that some data are showing a large volume of outflows from Binance.
This outflow actually movements between Binance hot and cold wallets due to the BTC address adjustments. Now if this had been just effective outflows this would have marked the largest withdrawal in its history at over 162,000 Bitcoin worth over 4.6 billion dollars. Now Julio Moreno who's the head of research at CryptoQuant he noted that these two transactions in question of 117,040,000 Bitcoin respectively were between Binance addresses so putting those effective outflows closer to about 10,100 Bitcoin so not as not as big of a deal as originally thought but still a lot of skepticism here. There's a lot of skepticism there. Vichela let's also talk about what we're seeing take place at Coinbase because Coinbase shares we're under a little bit of pressure today the CEO there coming out doubling down on criticisms of regulatory headwinds also saying that they're not going to back down they will gladly go face with the SEC what are we learning there? I mean this is quite the turnaround we had Coinbase saying they're not leaving the US CEO Brian Armstrong walking back those earlier comments on the possibility of leaving Coinbase leaving having Coinbase leave the US because of those regulatory headwinds. He told CNBC this morning Coinbase is not going to relocate overseas we're always going to have the US presence but the US is a little bit behind right now.
In terms of examples you could look to he praised the more thoughtful approaches as he called them in the EU for passing comprehensive crypto legislation as well as the UK he said being incredibly welcoming as a reason why it's a hub that they've decided to serve as well but of course SEC still in the headlights there Armstrong called the SEC an outlier in the way it's approaching crypto to curtail it rather than regulate it but he said that these lawsuits you look for silver lining here they offer a chance for more clarity which will benefit the industry as a whole hopefully get some answers on some of these different criteria. Yeah Brian Armstrong has had some pretty strong words for the SEC on the back of some concerns around that regulation. All right what's the latest coming out of DC when it comes to crypto mining? Well it's interesting because we thought we pretty much just had to look at the SEC in this and we know that the Biden administration was looking at you know not being fond of having people add encrypted to the 401ks but now on the mining side the Biden administration added the new digital asset mining energy that's Dane that's the excise tax its proposal to its budget last week so basically what'll happen is after a phasing period crypto miners would face a tax equal to 30% of the cost of the electricity they use in crypto mining essentially the White House saying pay your fair share. Now the White House estimates that in 2022 US crypto mining used about the same amount of electricity used to power the entire country's home computers or residential lighting so to give you some context there and of course the United States by far the biggest crypto mining country in the world so this will really be a blow for crypto miners. It will be something we will continue to track right Rochelle thanks so much.
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