Bitcoin’s Rally beyond $60,000 Leaves Coinbase Users with Zero Balance

Bitcoin surpassed $60,000 yesterday (Wednesday). It also exposed the readiness of a top crypto exchange, Coinbase, as some of its services crashed due to massive demand. Many Coinbase users complained that their balance on the exchange dropped to zero. Coinbase has confirmed that “all customer account balance display issues have been restored.”

All customer account balance display issues have been restored on https://t.co/ohqDivlp6Y. Thank you to all of our customers for your patience today. https://t.co/RcelnYpQCi

— Coinbase Support (@CoinbaseSupport) February 29, 2024

Heavy Traffic Collapsed the Tech

The inaccurate balance information came with a technical glitch on Coinbase. The exchange also pointed out that “due to increased traffic, some customers may still see errors in login, sends, receives and with some payment methods,” further ensuring that “funds are safe.”

After about 12 hours, the support team of the San Francisco-based exchange confirmed that all services were restored, including the “account balance display issues.”

We continue to see improvement in customer trading. Customer login has recovered & we’re seeing intermittent improvements in sends. Due to continued heightened traffic customers may still see errors in receives & with some payment methods. Rest assured your funds are safe. https://t.co/46lT8x9qLq

— Coinbase Support (@CoinbaseSupport) February 28, 2024

The Bitcoin Rally

Bitcoin underwent a massive rally in the last 24 hours, gaining about 11 percent. The cryptocurrency crossed the $60,000 mark after two years and is now trading at more than $63,300 as of press time. The Bitcoin rally suddenly took pace as it jumped over 22 percent in the last 48 hours. The Bitcoin rally also pushed other top cryptocurrencies: Ethereum gained about 7 percent in the last 24 hours, while Solana gained 13.6 percent.

As always, the wild rally of Bitcoin pushed traders to jump onto the bandwagon with FOMO. Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, also tweeted following the rally that his crypto exchange was “dealing with a LARGE surge of traffic.”

“We had modeled a ~10x surge in traffic and load-tested it. This exceeded that number,” Armstrong added.

Apps are now recovering.

We had modeled a ~10x surge in traffic and load tested it. This exceeded that number.

It's expensive to keep services over-provisioned, but we'll need to keep working on auto-scaling solutions, and killing any remaining bottlenecks. Thank you for… https://t.co/JXVppV57AF

— Brian Armstrong 🛡️ (@brian_armstrong) February 28, 2024

Coinbase is the top cryptocurrency exchange in the United States. Although several other top exchange brands are operating in the country, nothing could challenge the dominance of Coinbase.

Meanwhile, the publicly traded shares of Coinbase are witnessing massive demand from investors as it gained about 22 percent in the past five days and more than 152 percent in the past six months.