United States-based crypto exchange Coinbase has suffered a “system-wide outage,” rendering its services unusable for those looking to access the crypto exchange on desktop or mobile. 

Coinbase notified users of the outage on its official status page, sharing that a “major outage” began at 4:15 am UTC on May 14. 

Attempts to visit the website currently show a “503 Service Temporarily Unavailable” error message. According to a developer guide found on Mozilla, the most common cause is that the servers are down for maintenance or that is overloaded.

Coinbase Support’s official X account shared news of the outage in a May 14 post, saying it was investigating the issue and working on a solution. It reiterated that users’ funds are safe.

On Feb. 28, Coinbase and several other exchanges suffered temporary outages from a rapid uptick in crypto trading activity during a Bitcoin 

flash crash that saw the asset price fall nearly 10% before spiking back up. 

While outages are frustrating for users of crypto exchanges, pundits in the crypto community on X often use these outages as a way of spinning up a bullish narrative — claiming the surges of traffic that cause extended periods of downtime are ultimately good for crypto.  

Crypto trader Castillo Trading made the jest to his 73,000 followers on X, saying that a Coinbase outage was cause for a somewhat ironic celebration.

“Coinbase down. We are so back,” he wrote in a May 14 post to X.

Source