:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-1496426763-80f8caac25474b9ca33bece07399c802.jpg "Some Coinbase users unable to trade, see zero balance due to outage as Bitcoin surges")
key takeaways
- The Coinbase outage affected some users during intraday trading on Wednesday as Bitcoin reached its highest price in years.
- The cryptocurrency exchange platform said it is aware of the issue and is working to fix it.
- Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong said the outage was caused by a surge in traffic.
- Bitcoin climbed above $63,000 for the first time since 2021 in intraday trading on Wednesday.
An outage at Coinbase (COIN) left some users seeing zero balances in their accounts and being unable to trade on Wednesday, while Bitcoin (BTCUSD) surged above $63,000.
A status update on the Coinbase website timestamped at 9:40 a.m. Pacific Time said customer assets were “safe” and the exchange was “aware that some users may be seeing zero balances in their Coinbase accounts and may be unable to purchase or “Can experience errors in selling.”
With Bitcoin rallying to its highest price since November 2021, the surge in traffic may have led to service disruptions, according to a post on
As of 7:15 p.m. Eastern, Coinbase said it had restored all services on Coinbase.com, although some customers were seeing incorrect account balances. Earlier in the day, the exchange acknowledged that its users faced some issues due to high traffic. Armstrong also posted on X that the increase in traffic on Wednesday was more than 10x — the limit Coinbase had tested it could handle.
Although no direct connection can be drawn, there was a sharp decline in the price of Bitcoin in the minutes immediately preceding Coinbase’s post about the disruption.
trading view
Earlier today, there was another service disruption that involved delays in transactions for some Coinbase users trading on the Ethereum network. That issue was resolved around 1:30 pm Eastern.
Coinbase shares gave up some of their earlier gains and were up 0.79%, trading just above $200 around 3:27 p.m. ET on Wednesday. Bitcoin gave up its earlier gains, slipping below $60,000 before reclaiming that price milestone, up nearly 5% for the day.
(Update – February 28, 2024: This story was updated to include the recent outage status provided by Coinbase, additional comments from Coinbase CEO Armstrong’s ex post, and more current price movements.,
