‘Unprecedented’ Bitcoin Boom Sees Coinbase, Kraken Suffer Outages
Major bitcoin exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken are suffering downtime in a week when bitcoin prices are soaring to all-time highs.
While bitcoin surged to an all-time high of $2,740 on Bitstamp before losing $300 in returning to Wednesday’s heights, the heightened interest and subsequent demand for the world’s most popular cryptocurrency is proving too much to bear for a number of bitcoin companies.
Coinbase, a San Francisco-based exchange that offers bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin trading, was brought to its knees on Thursday, citing ‘unprecedented traffic and trading volume.
A statement released by the exchange read:
Coinbase has experienced unprecedented traffic and trading volume this week. As a result, Coinbase.com has suffered a few outages and downgraded performance for some users this week. Our engineering and support teams are working around the clock to restore our site to normal performance.
A visit to the homepage reveals Coinbase to be ‘currently down for maintenance.’
Kraken, also a US-based exchange which fuels over 60% of bitcoin trading in European markets, points to ‘degraded performance’ to its website and API. Kraken is seeing “all-time record traffic”, the trading platform revealed.
Identifying the issue for its current woes, Kraken stated:
The website and API are currently slow or unresponsive for many clients. We are working to resolve but do not have an ETA for when things may return to normal at this time. We are currently seeing all-time record traffic and performance may not return to normal until the load goes down.
Data from Kraken’s status page reveals three instances of downtime on Thursday for the website, while its API has fared worse.
Both exchanges contribute significantly to enable trading volumes in the US – the world’s largest bitcoin trading market. Coinbase, in particular, is second only to Bitfinex over the last 24 hours. However, today’s downtimes aren’t exclusive to the biggest bitcoin markets.
India, a young but growing bitcoin market with relatively modest trading volumes, has also witnessed massive interest in the cryptocurrency. Coinsecure, one of India’s top three bitcoin exchanges, pointed to the “exponential growth” of bitcoin users on its platform this week, leading to deposit and withdrawal delays. Zebpay, another major Indian wallet and exchange, reached half a million downloads of its mobile Android application this week and claimed to be adding 2,500 new users every day to its platform.
At its all-time high today, bitcoin had grown 174% since the turn of the year.
Featured image from Coinbase.
