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Coinbase blames AWS for hours-long crypto trading outage
TL;DR
Coinbase experienced a multi-hour trading outage due to issues with Amazon Web Services, affecting transactions on both web and mobile platforms. The outage was linked to increased temperatures in AWS service areas, and trading was later restored.
Key points
- Coinbase reported a multi-hour trading disruption
- The outage was attributed to Amazon Web Services failures
- Users faced issues on both web and mobile platforms
- Trading was restored after a 'cancel only' mode
- Coinbase is investigating the incident further
Mentioned in this story
CoinbaseAmazon Web Services
Coinbase (COIN) reported a multi-hour disruption to crypto trading on Thursday, which the Nasdaq-listed exchange attributed to an outage at Amazon Web Services. The incident drew criticism as Coinbase continues to grapple with declining trading activity, quarterly losses, and staff layoffs.
The crypto trading platform said users were unable to transact across web and mobile services after failures hit multiple AWS availability zones in the U.S. Eastern Region, located in Virginia.
“Coinbase experienced service disruptions due to increased temperatures in the affected AWS service,” the trading platform said in a status-page update. Trading was later restored after markets were briefly placed into a “cancel only” mode.
“This primary issue is now fully resolved - thank you for your patience,” said Coinbase on Friday in an X post, adding its team would investigate the incident. “Details may change as our investigation progresses and more information is received from AWS’s official retrospective, once published.”
In a separate statement on X, Coinbase said systems initially flagged “high error rates across multiple services,” and engineers traced the issue to failures in AWS infrastructure.
“Coinbase systems are designed to be resilient to a single zone outage,” the company said. “In this case, we observed failures impacting multiple AWS zones, which caused an extended outage of core trading services.”
However, the disruption drew criticism from software engineer Gergely Orosz, formerly at Uber and Skype, who has over 310,000 followers on X.
“Unfortunate optics for Coinbase to have an hours-long outage when customers could not trade, a few days after their CEO said how non-technical teams are shipping code to production,” Orosz wrote on Friday.
Coinbase has faced scrutiny in the past due to outages during periods of high market volatility and infrastructure stress. In 2020, Coinbase experienced a brief outage as the price of bitcoin crashed 10% from $9,500 to $8,100 in 30 minutes. Other U.S. exchanges, including Kraken, had reported all systems as operational during the same period. A week prior to that, Coinbase experienced a when bitcoin rallied 15% to $8,900.
Q&A
What caused the Coinbase trading outage on Thursday?
The outage was caused by failures in Amazon Web Services infrastructure, specifically linked to increased temperatures in the affected service areas.
How long did the Coinbase outage last?
The outage lasted for several hours, during which users were unable to transact on both web and mobile services.
What actions did Coinbase take during the outage?
Coinbase placed markets into a 'cancel only' mode while engineers investigated the issue and later confirmed that the primary problem was fully resolved.
