As the price of Bitcoin (BTC) dove to prices not seen since February, site traffic on major crypto exchanges and websites have surged, seemingly causing outages, intermittent access and slower loading times.
Earlier on Wednesday, users of Coinbase and Binance experienced delays in Ether (ETH) and ERC-20 token withdrawals “due to congestion on the Ethereum network,” according to the status pages of both major cryptocurrency exchanges. Purportedly for the same reason, Coinbase users still have only intermittent access to the website and mobile app while crypto analytics site CoinMarketCap and crypto exchange Kraken both briefly went down, leaving crypto users unable to check market activity and trade during a critical time.
Meanwhile, Gemini reported at 2:27 pm UTC that it would be taking emergency maintenance actions to correct ongoing issues. The exchange said that “All customer accounts and funds remain completely secure.”
Coinbase has gone offline several times during major Bitcoin price moves, leaving many users unable to access their portfolios. Though the exchange reported that users’ funds were safe, outages on any exchange during huge downturns or price surges can hurt traders wanting to buy or sell. Losses can mount when users aren’t able to access their accounts to sell their cryptocurrency, and potential profits can simply disappear when they can’t buy anything.
In what could be described as the crypto bloodbath of 2021 — referencing the March 2020 market downturn, in which the price of BTC dipped to the $3,000s overnight — major token prices have fallen significantly. At the time of publication, BTC is $35,642, having dropped more than 17% in the last 24 hours, while ETH has dropped 25%, almost dipping under $2,000 earlier on Wednesday. Nearly every token project is experiencing double-digit percentage drops in an extremely volatile crypto market.