Coinbase Back Online After Bitcoin’s Surge Overwhelmed the Platform

Coinbase users’ accounts showed a “zero balance” on Wednesday afternoon. Coinbase confirmed the problem on its status page at 12:40 p.m. ET but claims customer cryptocurrency funds are safe. The cryptocurrency exchange blames the outage on increased traffic, as Bitcoin’s price surged past $60,000.

Coinbase says customer trading is slowly coming back online as of 2:29 p.m. ET. The company added that some users may still experience errors when logging in, sending and receiving funds, and with some payment methods.

“We appreciate your patience. We’re beginning to see improvement in customer trading,” Coinbase said on its status page. “Due to increased traffic, some customers may still see errors in login, sends, receives and with some payment methods. Rest assured your funds are safe.”

Coinbase first reported that it was aware of “transaction delays” at 11:24 a.m. ET on Wednesday. CEO Brian Armstrong says the platform is experiencing a major surge in traffic in a post on X, and the company is working to remediate. Coinbase emphasizes that users’ assets are secured.

Downdetector showed a spike in Coinbase outages starting around noon ET on Wednesday. Over 9,000 customers reported outages, according to Downdetector in the morning, but reports have since dropped considerably. Coinbase is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States and holds over $255 billion in assets on its platform.

Coinbase’s help page is displaying a message that wait times are longer than usual. A company spokesperson told Gizmodo it’s actively working to resolve the issue. Users took to social media to express their concern about the cryptocurrency exchange’s outage on Wednesday.

“Anyone else’s Coinbase account at zero?” wrote one user on X.

“Mine just went to zero, the help center won’t even load,” wrote another.

As Coinbase goes down on Wednesday, the price of Bitcoin passed $60,000 for the first time since 2021. It marks a major resurgence for the cryptocurrency staple. The increased interest in Bitcoin seems to be the reason for the outage.