Slightly after Bitcoin’s value surpassed $60,000, its highest level since 2021, Coinbase, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, suffered major outages and errors on Wednesday afternoon that prevented some users from logging in at all and caused some user accounts to show a $0 balance.
The downtime has been attributed by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong to a “large surge of traffic” that overwhelmed the infrastructure of the exchange. Many users had connectivity problems as a result of Coinbase’s servers being overloaded by the unexpected surge of people trying to purchase, sell, or exchange Bitcoin.
Requests for a response from Coinbase representatives were not immediately answered.
Just after bitcoin’s spectacular climb, at about 12 p.m., users started reporting problems.
Customers may now access the exchange again, Coinbase said in a statement to Forbes. However, users are still experiencing issues with sending and receiving money as well as issues with “some payment methods.”
The majority of the gains Bitcoin had achieved were erased as the price of the cryptocurrency fell significantly from about $64,000 to about $59,500 after the interruption. Similar outages during moments of high market volatility have already occurred at Coinbase, drawing anger from consumers and industry experts.