Crypto exchange Coinbase suffers outages amid bitcoin rally

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase experienced technical issues Wednesday as bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, soared to its highest price in more than two years.

Coinbase Support assured all users that their funds with the crypto exchange are safe and its team is looking into the incident in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

“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,” Coinbase Support wrote.

The platform did not give a reason for the outage. Buy, sell, trade and transfer abilities are unavailable on the Coinbase website and Coinbase mobile while the issue is being resolved, according to the website.

Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong took to the platform to apologize for the disruption.

“We are dealing with a LARGE surge of traffic — apologies for any issues you encounter. The team is working to remediate,” Armstrong wrote on X.

The price of one bitcoin blasted past $60,000 for the first time since November 2021, when the digital asset hit an all-time high of nearly $67,000. The digital asset was approaching a new record when the outage occurred.

Bitcoin has had a stunning turnaround from last January, when one bitcoin was worth less than $20,000. The digital asset has more than doubled in value in the past four months alone.

The rally coincided with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) approval of the first-ever U.S. spot exchange-traded funds in January, which opened the door to billions of dollars in investment from major financial institutions.

Coinbase is one of the biggest players in Washington pushing for crypto policy as the industry has exploded, publicly clashing with the SEC and Chair Gary Gensler and courting crypto champions on Capitol Hill.

In 2023, Coinbase spent $2.9 million lobbying Congress, the Treasury Department and the SEC on issues including the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2023 and stablecoins, according to federal lobbying data compiled by the money-in-politics research group OpenSecrets.

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