Cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrency
Coinbase experiences outages during Bitcoin’s price pull-back
The largest US cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, experienced an outage on Wednesday, as Bitcoin’s price plummeted after reaching a 17-month high above $13,700.
The San Francisco-based company reported several outages across its platforms, including its website, mobile apps and API. At 03:53 PDT (11:53 BST), the company said that it had identified the issue and was working to fix it. A fix has since been implemented, but the company is still monitoring the situation. According to Coinbase’s status page, all services are now operational, although the platform is currently unable to process PayPal EUR transactions.
The outages did not last long, but they coincided with a sharp downward correction, which hit Bitcoin after the coin had reached a 17-month high above $13,700 in late Wednesday trading. The original cryptocurrency fell to as low as $11,515.14 in today’s morning trading, with other major coins experiencing big price slumps, as well. BTC has managed to weather the storm in subsequent trading and is now within striking distance of the $12,000 level.
A spokesperson for Coinbase made a brief comment to CNBC, telling the news service that the outages were caused by “high volume”. In its report on the story, industry news outlet Coindesk cited data from BitMex showing that nearly $250 million in volume changed hands “in a 5-minute period surrounding the initial price drop, with nearly $690 million in volume trading across 15 minutes after the drop began across its XBT/USD perpetual swap contract market”.
Coindesk also reported that trading application Robinhood had also seen issues with its crypto trading service.
At the time of writing (13:54 BST), the Bitcoin price stood at $11,823.80, according to data from cryptocurrency tracker Coinmarketcap. A staggering $44.2 billion worth of BTC coins have changed hands over the past 24 hours, according to the website.
Featured image: Primakov / Shutterstock.com
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