A 14-hour service outage at the U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase on October 25 sparked widespread alarm among its users after a display glitch caused many account balances to temporarily appear as zero.
In Brief
- A planned four-hour system upgrade at Coinbase on October 25 extended into a service outage lasting more than 14 hours.
- The disruption halted trading and withdrawals, and a display glitch caused many user account balances to temporarily appear as zero.
- Coinbase confirmed all funds were safe and attributed the delay to “unexpected complexities,” adding to a history of service disruptions at the exchange.
The incident began as a scheduled four-hour systems upgrade, which was slated to conclude at 11:00 a.m. PT. The downtime extended throughout the day, with full services not restored until 9:26 p.m. PT, according to the company’s official statement.
While the outage was ongoing, many users reported that their account balances appeared to be zero. Coinbase later clarified that this was a display error and assured customers that “all funds are safe.” The company stated the prolonged downtime was due to “unexpected complexities in the upgrade process.”
Coinbase User Backlash and Trading Halts
The outage occurred during a period of notable price volatility in the digital asset market, with Bitcoin dipping below $108,000. Users on the social media platform X expressed frustration over their inability to manage their positions.
The incident prompted a wave of “not your keys, not your coins” advocacy. “You already had us uneasy with ‘hey we gonna lock you out for 4 hours’ and now you are 2 hours late,” wrote one user under the handle @jayc272, citing concerns over failed stop-loss triggers. @ShiLLin_ViLLian posting a screenshot of the error screen with: “TAKE YOUR FUNDS OFF COINBASE IMMEDIATELY.”
The incident prompted renewed calls from some market participants for investors to hold their assets in self-custody wallets. Data from the website Downdetector showed a significant spike in user-reported problems throughout the day.
A Pattern of Operational Risk
The recent Coinbase disruption is the latest in a series of operational challenges for the publicly traded company. Just days prior, on October 20, Coinbase services were impacted by a broader outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS), highlighting the exchange’s dependence on third-party cloud infrastructure.
According to the monitoring service IsDown, over 1,300 outage incidents have been reported at Coinbase since April 2020.
Chain Street’s Take
Coinbase’s latest outage reinforces a growing structural risk in the digital asset market: the centralization of access points. Each time a leading exchange freezes, it exposes how much of crypto’s liquidity and user trust still depends on a handful of intermediaries.
For a platform built on the promise of decentralization, 14 hours of silence can feel like a lifetime and a reminder that self-custody isn’t ideological, it’s operational resilience.
