The most popular cryptocurrency site in the US that allows people to make transactions, Coinbase, announced it suspended it services Friday due to a crash in cryptocurrency prices. According to the announcement that the company published Friday on its website, the buys and sells are “temporarily offline” due to “today’s high traffic.” However, one of its team is working to fully restore the availability “as soon as possible.”
The customers who tried to enter the website around 9:30 a.m. ET couldn’t. They only saw a message saying that the site was currently offline, just letting them have a “snapshot.”
A spokesperson directed to TechCrunch to inform more about the crash and when the company was going to enable its website again. However, nothing was commented because there was no additional information.
These past weeks have been rough for the marquee crypto-currency wallet and transaction company due to the sudden increases of the coin, which have made the Coinbase’ services to fall constantly.
The cryptocurrency crash that bitcoin suffered Thursday was one of the lowest decreases in its history. This massive loss of value is the biggest that the currency has seen in 2017, and reached to erase around $4,000 at one point.
This event has amazed many people around the world because is the first time that something like this occurs this year. The value of bitcoin had impressively increased since January – when the currency was recognized at $998. Just early this week, it worthed nearly $20,000.
On Friday morning, bitcoin’s price dropped below $12,00 -, 40 percent off its most recent high.
Just like bitcoin, there are other blockchain-based currencies whose values unexpectedly dropped – some of them, even further. However, no one has given a concrete explanation of this event – TechCrunch reported.
People faced the website offline
The first message saying that Coinbase was offline appeared at 9:30 a.m. ET. 30 minutes later, the site started to offer its services again. However, there wasn’t any explanation, and the company still hasn’t commented anything on a statement.
An hour after, at 11 a.m. ET, the website went offline again and showed the message that clarified it was “working” to fully restore its availability.
The theory of Coinbase crushing down due to the cryptocurrency’s drop has not been confirmed by the website, yet. However, many other media outlets claimed this was the reason.
A person familiarized to Coinbase told Fortune that the rumors circulating on Reddit and social media about the company facing a liquidity crunch weren’t true. These have not been backed up by any credible fount. Bloomberg explained that they might be tied to people expecting to hammer the crypto markets.
“The sharks are beginning to circle here, and the futures markets may give them a venue to strike,” Ross Norman, chief executive officer of London-based bullion dealer Sharps Pixley, which offers gold in exchange for bitcoin. “Bitcoin’s been heavily driven by retail investors, but there’ll be some aggressive funds looking for the right opportunity to hammer this thing lower.”
We will have to wait until the company’s statement.
Source: Fortune