While Bitcoin (BTC) was trying to reach a new all-time high, the accounts of users of the American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase reached zero. Meanwhile, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong reassured users on the spot.
I had $3.6 Million on Coinbase
and now it’s shows $0 lol
WTF IS HAPPENING ? pic.twitter.com/BaV4pWjFo6
— Ash Crypto (@Ashcryptoreal) February 28, 2024
On February 28, the first cryptocurrency updated its multi-year high. For the first time since November 2021, the price of BTC reached $64,000. Amid a sharp rise, the platform faced an influx of users – due to increased traffic, the trading platform system crashed.
Coinbase Technical Issues
Yesterday, Coinbase users began complaining that their accounts were displaying incorrect balances. Many of them went to zero, which naturally led to panic.
The trading platform quickly confirmed the fact of technical problems and assured users that all their funds were safe. By the time the material was published, everything had already been corrected. However, this took the development team approximately 12 hours.
We are aware that some users may see a zero balance across their Coinbase accounts & may experience errors in buying or selling. Our team is investigating this & will provide an update shortly. Your assets are safe.
You can track this incident at https://t.co/a3pl4WiDhZ— Coinbase Support (@CoinbaseSupport) February 28, 2024
According to the CEO Brian Armstrong, the error arose due to an influx of users. For some time, customers were unable to sell or buy digital assets.
“We simulated a 10x surge in traffic and performed load testing. Maintaining redundant service provisioning is expensive, but we need to continue to work on auto-scaling solutions and address any remaining vulnerabilities. Thank you for your patience,” coinbase wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
We previously wrote about the outage in the Solana (SOL) blockchain. In early February, the network suddenly stopped processing blocks. The fix took more than five hours. Matthew Siegel, head of digital assets research at VanEck, suggested that someone else’s deliberate actions led to the error.
Glitch: Balances at Zero & CEO Update
In a series of progress updates on their website, the company confirmed they were aware of the issue causing balances to appear as zero, and noted additional difficulties with buying and selling cryptocurrencies. The exchange reported that customer trading was improving, although they acknowledged the possibility of “glitches in receiving funds and certain payment methods” for some users due to the continued high traffic.
The latest update, posted at 1:05 PM Pacific Standard Time (PST), stated, “We are observing a return to normal in Coinbase.com activity. We will continue to closely monitor our systems and provide further updates.”
Meanwhile, According to company CEO Brian Armstrong on X, in a subsequent tweet, indicated that the app was “bouncing back” while revealing that the company had anticipated and tested for a “significant increase in traffic,” but the current situation had surpassed their expectations.
