Once again, a major crypto exchange suffered an unexpected downtime that coincided with the sudden swing in the price of the leading cryptocurrency. Several in the crypto community criticize the company’s woeful lack of preparedness for heightened traffic, whereas others cry foul. After the price of bitcoin rallied from around $8,000 to close to $9,400 before retracing slightly, Coinbase, one of the most popular trading platforms for digital assets, suddenly announced unexpected downtime.
Crypto exchanges continue to report downtime during the high volatility period.
There have been multiple occasions of crypto exchanges dropping service during periods of heightened volatility. Just last week, Poloniex reported similar issues. Crypto traders facing outages during such volatility are often quick to cry foul. Some more suspicious market observers alleged that exchanges deliberately freeze systems to try to control dramatic moves. A twitter user responded to Coinbase’s announcement of downtime, saying,
“whenever there are a spike and big profits, Coinbase always had an issue where people cant get their profits.”
But several experts believe that Coinbase and other exchanges aren’t built for the kind of traffic that comes with growing market volatility. However, the malpractice narrative doesn’t make a great deal of sense during pumps as crypto exchanges have a vested interest in a high Bitcoin price.
Bitcoin hits seven-week high as whales call the upsurge fake.
At the time of writing, the price of bitcoin is trading around the $8700 mark after trading close to $9,200 for some time. Several BTC whales warned that the recent upsurge in the price is fake as created by some big players with the halvening narrative. However, some are expecting the price to go above $10,000 in the short term. The halvening event is scheduled to occur next month, which would reduce the block reward by half. Currently, the reward for each block mined in 12.5 BTC, but it would be reduced to 6.25 BTC post halvening next month.
