On March 4, as Bitcoin rose again to new yearly highs, some Coinbase users were unable to view their account balances for approximately three hours.
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase experienced another problem on March 4, causing some users to see their account balances drop to zero.
At 5:36 a.m. UTC, the company said: “A small percentage of users may see their Coinbase accounts intermittently experience a zero balance and web page lag. Our team is investigating the issue. An update will be provided soon. Trading is currently unaffected and your assets are safe."
Roughly three hours after the issue was discovered, Coinbase implemented a fix at around 6:21 PM UTC. The exchange continued to monitor the issue over the next few hours and announced at 8:29 PM UTC that the issue was fully resolved.
Just five days ago, on February 28, the company encountered almost the same problem. At the time, users saw a zero balance in their accounts and were unable to buy or sell assets. The company fixed the issue about seven hours after confirming there was a problem.
Outages may be caused by traffic surges
While Coinbase has yet to determine the cause of the latest incident, it said increased traffic was a factor in the February 28 incident.
The company wrote:
"Due to the continued increase in traffic, some customers may still see exceptions to their collections and certain payment methods."
While both incidents have been resolved, data shows demand continues to grow. The exchange’s trading volume reached $7.5 billion in 24 hours, with a daily growth rate of 120%. This high-volume transaction is likely related to the positive performance of Bitcoin price.
As of 10:20 PM UTC on March 4, Bitcoin (BTC) was worth $67,481, just $1,563 below its all-time high set in November 2021. Bitcoin is up 7.1% in the past 24 hours and 23.6% over the past week.
While speculation as to the root cause of this speculation ranges from positive to malicious, the issue is likely a side effect of a sudden surge in traffic during the recent market rally. #Coinbase #余额归零