Users Face XRP Withdrawal Issues on Uphold

Uphold is currently facing a temporary issue triggering unprecedented delays for on-chain withdrawals of crypto assets on the platform, such as XRP.

The Uphold team swiftly announced the ordeal in a recent post on X, assuring customers that the issue is only temporary. According to them, they have had to delay blockchain withdrawals on the platform due to a technical problem. The team failed to disclose the cause of this technical problem.

We have a temporary technical issue that means we’ve had to delay on-chain withdrawals for a short time. We’ll be resuming normal on-chain withdrawals shortly.

— Uphold (@UpholdInc) December 4, 2023

However, they confirmed that withdrawals would revert to their normal timeframes in a short while. Expectedly, Uphold’s disclosure and the issue itself have caught the eye, generating mixed reactions from XRP enthusiasts and other crypto proponents.

Notably, some customers leveraged the opportunity to highlight their personal experiences, as deposits and withdrawals have recorded delays. One XRP proponent expressed dissatisfaction with the development, noting that a transaction took six hours to complete, leading to a loss of funds.

They also revealed that they had transferred Ethereum (ETH) from Coinbase, America’s leading exchange, to Uphold. Still, the transaction had remained stuck for about seven hours at the time of the disclosure. The customer noted that they were still waiting for the transaction to be finalized.

While some used the opportunity to advise investors against keeping their crypto assets on centralized exchanges, most customers expressed satisfaction with Uphold’s level of transparency and swift disclosure on the matter, a move that warrants commendation.

Possible Cause

Interestingly, the issue has come up amid the ongoing address registration for the upcoming Evernode airdrop for XRP holders. According to Evernode, up to 23,858 addresses have registered, per the most recent update, as the total qualifying XRP tokens cross 2 billion.

With only two participating exchanges, Uphold, and Bitrue, some XRP community members have speculated that the withdrawal delays could relate to the upcoming airdrop. However, this seems unlikely, with others suggesting it might pertain to a scalability issue.

Recall that Uphold witnessed a similar ordeal on the back of the July 13 ruling, which declared XRP a non-security. Being the only major exchange in the U.S. that supported XRP at the time, Uphold recorded most of the surging demand for XRP from U.S. investors. This resulted in a temporary crash on the platform.