Coinbase – one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the United States – can’t seem to handle it whenever there’s a major crypto rally. The exchange always seems to undergo technical problems and sometimes even experiences temporary shutdowns. As traders witnessed late last week, the recent bitcoin surge was no exception.
Coinbase Loses Power… Again
Coinbase put out a message early Friday morning announcing that the company was experiencing technical problems that forced executives to temporarily disable all trading services. The message was posted to Twitter and mentioned:
Due to a technical issue, we are experiencing degraded service where some trades may not be able to be completed. Our team is working to quickly restore service back to normal, and we’ll send another update soon. Thank you for your patience.
Not long after, the exchange put out a follow-up message claiming that while trading was back up, not all services had been fully restored:
Trading is 100 percent back up. All services are healthy except portfolio balances which is currently in degraded state.
Shortly after this message was released, Coinbase explained in a final statement:
All services are back up. We are currently monitoring our systems.
Issues like this seem to occur with Coinbase every time that bitcoin, the world’s number one digital currency by market cap, appears to undergo a heavy rally, which was the case over the past few days following news that popular trading app Robinhood was putting limits on the purchase of stock shares for companies like GameStop.
Moments later, a spokesperson for the app announced that the company would also be halting crypto trades, claiming:
Due to extraordinary market conditions, we’ve temporarily turned off instant buying power for crypto. Customers can still use settled funds to buy crypto. We’ll keep monitoring market conditions and communicating with our customers.
Many Reddit and social media users jumped online to not only criticize the move but to try and push the crypto space to new heights following what they thought was investment interference. The idea was to try and promote the notion that cryptocurrency was more legitimate than what standard financial firms would have traders believe.
How Many Times Has This Happened, Now?
Assets such as bitcoin rose by more than $2,000 in a single day following the discussion, while other competing assets – such as Dogecoin – rallied even further, eventually surging by more than 300 percent or more. Hence, these could have been the primary reasons behind Coinbase’s recent struggle.
Similar power outages have been noted over the past 12 months given how much bitcoin has jumped during that time. One of the biggest incidents occurred last summer when bitcoin struck $10,000 again for the second time in months. Coinbase ultimately experienced a major outage in its trading algorithms, thereby preventing many customers from purchasing additional assets and taking advantage of the volatility.