EGLD withdrawals frozen, Upbit decides from October 19: What is going on with MultiversX?

If you hold EGLD and your trading venue refuses to let you withdraw, the problem is not your account. The MultiversX chain has been running again since September 24, but exchanges release deposits and withdrawals one by one, and two of the venues that matter most to European investors still have not done so: at Bitvavo both deposits and withdrawals are listed as under maintenance, and at Binance the native MultiversX network is switched off. Kraken closed its incident on October 1 and trades EGLD against the euro again. At Upbit, the single largest market for the token, all three EGLD pairs carry a caution label; the exchange will decide between October 19 and October 23 whether trading continues.

The token trades at $4.53, or 4.03 euros, on Saturday evening, around 1.7 percent above the previous day. With a market capitalisation of roughly $140 million, EGLD ranks 239th, and daily turnover sits at about $2.8 million. That is thin, and that is precisely where the risk of this deadline lies: if the venue that carries the bulk of that turnover disappears, liquidity goes with it and does not come back quickly. This article sets out which route out of the token is open today, which one only looks open, and what October 19 means for you.

The chain halt of September 19 and why exchanges are still lagging behind it

On September 19 the MultiversX mainnet stopped producing blocks. According to the operators, the trigger was an attempt to exploit an atomicity gap at the level of the virtual machine. Atomicity means that a transaction is either executed in full or not at all. Where that guarantee breaks, a transaction can take half effect and leave behind a state the chain itself considers invalid. That is what happened, and the network stopped rather than continue from a false position.

Five days later, on September 24, the chain resumed after a recovery upgrade. That settled the technical side of the matter, but not the commercial one. An exchange holds customer balances in its own wallets and, after an event like this, has to verify two things for itself: whether the balance it sees matches the state of the chain, and whether an incoming deposit it credits will remain permanently valid. As long as that is unresolved, the barrier stays down. That is why trading venues are running ten days behind the network.

Anyone who read our checklist for the Supernova hard fork of September 10 knows the backstory: nine days after the planned upgrade, the chain stood still because of an unplanned fault. The two events have nothing to do with each other, but for you as a holder it is the same chain of blocks on your money.

Bitvavo: EGLD deposits and withdrawals are both under maintenance

Bitvavo still lists EGLD, but it supports only the native MultiversX network for the token, and that network is under maintenance for deposits as well as withdrawals. In practice this means you can sell or swap EGLD held there inside the exchange, but you cannot take it out and you cannot add to it. Bitvavo offers no alternative chain for this token.

This is not an isolated case at the provider. Bitvavo has removed or forcibly converted several smaller tokens in recent weeks, most recently SWEAT with a deadline of October 7 and before that Kava, Nano and Ravencoin. The sober reading for you: a maintenance notice on a small-cap token is not automatically a precursor to a delisting, but it is the moment to decide whether this venue is the right place for that position.

Binance: the native MultiversX network is off, only the BEP-20 detour is open

At Binance, trading in EGLD works normally while the transfer side is half closed. The native network, listed at Binance as MultiversX eGold and set as the default route, currently permits neither deposits nor withdrawals; the accompanying note states that the wallet is under maintenance and that funds in transit are safe. Exactly one other route is open: the BNB Smart Chain, in the BEP-20 standard.

That open route is why many holders believe everything is fine at Binance. It is not, and the difference is no technical footnote. It determines what ends up in your wallet.

Kraken closed its incident on October 1 and EGLD against the euro trades again

Kraken had tracked EGLD in an incident of its own since mid-September and suspended both trading and transfers. That incident was closed on October 1, and the EGLD/euro pair is back to regular status. If your EGLD sits there, you have been able to sell and withdraw again since the start of October.

This is where many reports from the last week of September are out of date. Several pieces published on September 24 state that Kraken continues to bar new EGLD trades. As of early October that no longer holds. When you read a news item on this incident, check the date inside it, not the date on the page.

EGLD on the BNB Smart Chain is not the same asset as native eGold

If you withdraw from Binance via BEP-20, you do not receive a token on the MultiversX chain. You receive a version tied to the BNB Smart Chain. What stands behind that version is not the MultiversX protocol but the exchange's promise to swap the token back for the original at any time. In technical terms it is a wrapped token: a shell on a foreign chain whose value depends on the custodian keeping the backing in place.

That has three concrete consequences for you. First, you cannot use such a version in a MultiversX wallet and you cannot stake it on that chain. Second, the way back runs through the same exchange again, because outside it this token finds almost no market. Third, you are carrying exactly the risk you were trying to escape by withdrawing in the first place: custodian risk. Anyone who pulls EGLD off an exchange in order to be independent, and takes the BEP-20 route to do it, has merely moved the dependency.

A wallet you control yourself removes the question altogether. Which devices qualify, and what they cost, is set out in our hardware wallet comparison.

Fees side by side: 0.0051 against 0.0008 EGLD per withdrawal

The open detour is also the dearer one. Binance charges 0.0051 EGLD for a withdrawal over the BNB Smart Chain, against 0.0008 EGLD for the native MultiversX network. That is more than six times as much. The minimum amount differs too: 0.01 EGLD over BEP-20 against 0.0016 EGLD over the native network.

In euro terms, at a price of 4.03 euros, that is roughly 2 cents against about a third of a cent. For a position worth several hundred euros it settles nothing. For a small position it matters, and for the decision whether to withdraw now or wait for the native network, the fee is in any case the smaller part of the calculation. The larger part is how long you are willing to wait for the release.

What a caution label at a Korean exchange means for the price

Upbit lists EGLD against the won, against bitcoin and against USDT, and all three pairs have carried the caution marker since the incident. As a control: the same exchange's large bitcoin and ethereum pairs do not carry it. The specific ground recorded for EGLD is the gap to international prices, meaning a divergence between the Korean quote and the global market.

A caution label in Korea is a formal stage, not an opinion: the exchange flags the token visibly in trading, reviews it within a fixed window and then decides whether trading continues. For the price, the risk lies not in the marker itself but in the market share attached to it. By its own measurement on Saturday, Upbit carries around a fifth of total EGLD trading volume, making it the largest single market, well ahead of Binance and HTX. A delisting there takes that demand out of the order book, and on a token with $2.8 million in daily turnover the effect is stronger than it would be on a large name.

How such a case unfolds was on show a few days ago with another token: Upbit ends trading in Ravencoin on October 12, where the exchange's share of volume was considerably higher still. The comparison works as a template for the procedure, not as a forecast for EGLD: with Ravencoin the decision has been taken, with EGLD it is pending.

Upbit classifies EGLD as a caution item and decides between October 19 and 23

Upbit says it has already halted deposits and withdrawals for EGLD. For the resumption, the exchange names an order: withdrawals are to be enabled first, with deposits to be announced separately. For holders that is the friendlier sequence, because it opens the exit before the entrance.

The deadline itself, the window from October 19 to October 23, is cited in reporting about the exchange and not in a notice we were able to inspect directly; Upbit's announcement pages are blocked from outside Korea. Treat the window as second-hand information, then, and go by what is visible in your own account. What is documented and checked by us is the procedure itself: the three EGLD markets carry the marker, the control markets do not.

European investors have no Upbit account in any case, as the exchange serves Korea. The deadline still matters to you, because it bears on the price at which you sell on Bitvavo, Binance or Kraken. If you are reconsidering your choice of venue, the differences in cost and licensing are set out in our crypto exchange comparison, and on supervision specifically in our comparison of regulated trading venues.

Self-custody: where one venue's blockade cannot reach you

The episode exposes a limit there is no arguing with: as long as a token sits on an exchange, the exchange decides when you may move it. The chain was running again from September 24, the transfers at two large providers were not. A balance in a wallet whose keys you hold yourself was never touched by this freeze.

That is no argument for withdrawing everything at once. It is an argument for choosing the split deliberately: the part you want to trade on the exchange, the part you intend to leave alone in your own custody. What that separation looks like in practice, and what matters when you withdraw, we described using the example of frozen withdrawals in this piece on self-custody.

One technical note: native EGLD belongs in a wallet that supports the MultiversX chain. An address that only knows Ethereum or the BNB Smart Chain is no destination for this token. Send a withdrawal to the wrong chain and you will usually lose it. Always check the address and the network at the provider itself, never from memory.

Holding period and tax in Germany on a sale made under time pressure

If the deadline has you thinking about selling, do the tax arithmetic as well. In Germany, cryptocurrencies held as private assets fall under the one-year holding period of section 23 of the Income Tax Act: sell at a profit within a year of buying and that profit is taxable at your personal income tax rate. After a year of holding, the gain is tax-free. For gains realised inside the period there is an exemption threshold of 1,000 euros a year, covering all private disposals taken together. Exceed it and the full amount is taxable, not merely the part above the threshold.

In practice that means a sale made out of nervousness two months before your holding period ends can cost more than the market risk you are dodging. Conversely, a loss inside the period can be offset against gains from other private disposals. Which purchase records you need for that, and how the political situation is moving, is set out in our piece on the holding period for crypto gains. Binding advice on your own case can only come from a tax adviser.

What MultiversX itself says about the sequence of events and what stays open

According to the project, user balances were not lost, and the chain is running in normal operation again after the recovery upgrade; it has been producing blocks continuously since September 24. A full incident report has been announced but had not been published as of October 3.

Three points stay open, and it is more honest to name them than to fill them in. First, who is behind the attempt has not been established, and nobody is being named. Second, neither Bitvavo nor Binance has put a date on reopening the native network. Third, whether Upbit continues or ends trading after the review window is a decision that has not yet been taken. Any date you are sold on this today is an estimate.

What you can establish for yourself is the state of your own access. All four trading venues in this article show in their account pages whether EGLD deposits and withdrawals are open. That display is more current than any report about it.

EGLD: Your next three steps

1. Establish the state of your own account. Open the EGLD withdrawal page at your trading venue and look at which network is offered there. If only the BNB Smart Chain is available, the native network is still frozen. Where BEP-20 is the only network on offer, take that as your answer rather than the news flow.
2. Decide before October 19, not after. Settle whether you are holding the position, trimming it or moving it into your own custody, and anchor that in your entry price and your holding period rather than in the headlines. On custody, our hardware wallet comparison helps.
3. Assemble your purchase records. Pull the purchase date, quantity and purchase price from your trading history before you sell. Without those details you cannot evidence the one-year period, and the tax office will then calculate against you. Note both down before you place an order.

The course of the chain halt and the position at Kraken were documented by CryptoSlate; the exchange's own incident notices are on the Kraken status page.

(As of October 3, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)