Major Crypto Exchanges Suffer System Outages Amid Massive User Activity

A number of major cryptocurrency exchanges reported technical issues and system outage on Wednesday, following a massive increase in users activity. Top crypto trading platforms like Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini were all affected today.

Some exchanges worked today, some didn’t. Remember those that worked.
— Gabor Gurbacs (@gaborgurbacs) May 19, 2021

Crypto Exchanges Report Technical Issues

The publicly traded US exchange Coinbase reported an “intermittent downtime” on its status webpage on Wednesday.

We’ve put a fix in place and are monitoring the results, however you shouldn’t run into any more trouble logging into Coinbase and Coinbase Pro. We sincerely apologize for any trouble caused by this issue, and we thank you for your patience with us today.
— Coinbase Support (@CoinbaseSupport) May 19, 2021

Gemini had to undergo emergency maintenance, citing issues of stale market data. According to Gemini’s status webpage however, “a fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results”.

We are aware of the issues our users have experienced this morning. All customer accounts and funds remained completely secure. Gemini mobile, web, API and AT interfaces are now back up and running. Please view our status page for more information: https://t.co/9gNdlyBPqn
— Gemini Support (@GeminiSupport) May 19, 2021

Kraken suffered connectivity issues. The users also complained that their crypto wallet balances weren’t updating after completing transactions. The exchange also confirmed issues with funding via Debit / Credit Cards, all of which are being solved and monitored.

The scheduled maintenance has been completed and we’re fully operational again. We thank you for your patience.
Stay up to date with Kraken’s real-time status updates here: https://t.co/SiYH5aAlw0
— Kraken Support (@krakensupport) May 19, 2021

Binance had reported issues with withdrawals on Ethereum-based digital currencies. At some point, the exchange had to pause the service.

$ETH and ERC20 withdrawals have been resumed.
Withdrawal fees have been temporarily raised to account for the current gas prices.
— Binance (@binance) May 19, 2021

Crypto Market Faces Extreme Correction

The system outages and technical issues with these exchanges aren’t surprising, given that many crypto investors and traders have been scrambling to close their positions due to the bearish state of the market. Major cryptos like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin and Litecoin, all dropped by more than 15 percent in price.

At the time of writing, the entire crypto market capitalization was $1.77 trillion USD, with a 16 percent decrease over the past 24 hours.