Outage Hits Coinbase Exchange, US Bank Account Clients Affected
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase issued alerts at 7:57 a.m. ET Sunday morning indicating that its platform experienced a power outage that left Coinbase account holders with US bank accounts unable to complete transactions.
In a statement, Coinbase said: “We are currently unable to take payments or make withdrawals involving US bank accounts. Our team is aware of this issue and is working to get everything back to normal as soon as possible.”
At 8:23 a.m. ET, the exchange issued another update saying that engineers identified the transaction’s problems and that a fix was being implemented. The main cause of the problem was a bug that has restricted US bank accounts from making withdrawals, deposits or purchases on the platform.
Coinbase identified the issue as an issue with “ACH withdrawal, deposit and purchase errors.” ACH (the Automated Clearing House Network) is a system used to transfer money electronically in the United States between bank accounts.
The exchange further clarified that the affected users can still use debit cards or PayPal to make direct crypto purchases during the downtime. The firm described the technical failure as a “major outage.” While all other tokens supported on the platform remained fully tradable, Solana (SOL) experienced poor performance due to the outage incident that started on Friday night and spread over much of Saturday.
Coinbase later released an update assuring account holders that their funds are safe, and said it would provide additional information when functionality resumes. As of 11:30 a.m. EST on Sunday, the issue was still unresolved.
This is not the first incident the exchange has faced. In May, Coinbase experienced problems with withdrawals. Users witnessed rolling delays in withdrawals, leaving thousands of dollars hanging while others were unable to access the app or website.
The exchange confirmed the issue to head off growing fears amid a widespread crash in crypto prices, prompting trades and withdrawals. The drop in prices pushed many users to sell their assets and tested the underlying financial infrastructure of several firms.
In June, a Cloudflare breach hit several major popular online services, including crypto exchanges such as FTX, Bitfinex, and OKX, raising questions about the security of centralized crypto platforms. Many services affected by the Cloudflare incident were back online within two hours.
Image source: Shutterstock
