Coinbase Global Inc., the biggest US cryptocurrency exchange, said some individual investors saw zero balances in their accounts, the second such outage in less than a week.
The glitch came as Bitcoin inches toward its all-time record high of nearly $69,000. Bitcoin rose as much as 7.5% Monday, hovering near $67,000. The company said it affected “a small subset of users” and their “assets are safe.” Last week, users experienced errors in buying and selling. Monday’s problem was “a display issue only,” a Coinbase spokesperson said. The company later said it issued “a fix which remediated the display issue impacting customer account balances and latency across Coinbase.com.”
New York state’s Department of Financial Services is in “continuous contact with regulated entities including Coinbase to understand any interruptions or vulnerabilities that pose a risk to consumers or the institutions themselves,” a spokesperson for the department said Friday.
Crypto exchanges often experience glitches during sharp moves in Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency based on market value. A flood of traders tend to go onto such platforms to take part in the market action. Last week, Coinbase had an influx of traffic that was more than 10 times its usual volume, the company said.
Some exchanges have been preparing for and are bracing for more volatility. Trading platform Crypto.com did not have outages last week but it had plenty in 2021, said CEO Kris Marszalek.
“What we learned in 2021 is it’s extremely difficult to deal with this onslaught of traffic,” Marszalek said. “We took two years meticulously fixing and improving stuff.”
Similarly, crypto exchange Bitstamp has “in place a set of scalable processes that could absorb those surges,” such as for customers onboarding and inquiries, said Bitstamp USA Chief Executive Officer Robert Zagotta.
“I think it’s going to get more active over the coming quarters,” he added.
David Schwed, chief operating officer of Halborn, a blockchain security firm, said the Coinbase glitches show the crypto market’s infrastructure is still adapting to handle increasing demand and volumes.
“It’s a learning lesson for the industry. We are still early in many respects,” Schwed said.
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