Alexis Kestler
Hey there! If you‘re wondering "Is Coinbase down right now?" you‘ve come to the right place. As an avid Coinbase user myself, I totally understand how frustrating it can be when the site or app is glitchy or won‘t load.
With its frequent outages lately, it‘s normal to feel like Coinbase is always down! While they‘re usually back up pretty quickly, any downtime can prevent you from making timely trades or managing your portfolio when you need to.
After dealing with my fair share of Coinbase headaches, I decided to dig into the root causes of their technical issues and best practices for handling outages smoothly.
In this troubleshooting guide, I‘ll share everything I‘ve learned to help you:
- Understand the main reasons why Coinbase goes down
- Check Coinbase‘s system status when you can‘t connect
- Resolve commonproblems yourself
- Get updates from Coinbase during an outage
- Minimize disruption from future downtime
I may be a cryptocurrency nerd, but I‘ll avoid the technical jargon in this post and make the advice straightforward. Let‘s get started!
Why Does Coinbase Keep Going Down?
Before we dive into solutions, it helps to know what typically causes Coinbase to crash in the first place. Their systems are complex with many dependencies. Based on Coinbase‘s incident reports, here are the most common reasons for outages:
1. Traffic Spikes Overwhelm Capacity
With the crypto market mania in recent years, Coinbase has seen massive surges in user signups, trading volumes, and traffic hitting their servers. In 2021 alone, monthly trades jumped from $17 billion to $327 billion!
These parabolic spikes often exceed Coinbase‘s bandwidth, causing lag, crashes, and temporary service disruptions. Their systems aren‘t scaling up fast enough to handle the explosion in activity.
2. Technical Failures and Buggy Code
As with any rapidly evolving tech company, Coinbase deploys new features and services at a blazing pace. Unfortunately, this breakneck speed means less thorough testing and plenty of bugs in new code.
When they push buggy code to production servers, it often causes glitches or unintended side effects that break things. Their engineering team then scrambles to identify and fix the underlying technical flaws.
3. Cloud Outages Knock Systems Offline
Like most modern web companies, Coinbase relies on cloud infrastructure from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and others. When these cloud providers have outages, Coinbase goes down too.
AWS alone has experienced 27 major outages over the past decade, including a 5-hour crash that took down a chunk of the internet in 2017. For better or worse, Coinbase‘s fate depends on the big cloud players staying online.
4. Banking Partners Have Technical Issues
Here‘s an issue few people consider – to enable fiat currency transfers, Coinbase integrates with numerous banks, payment processors, and financial networks like ACH and SWIFT.
When any of these underlying systems have outages or lag, it gums up the pipes for depositing or withdrawing funds on Coinbase. Their availability is only as good as their weakest link.
5. DDoS Attacks Overwhelm Servers
As one of the biggest crypto exchanges, Coinbase is constantly bombarded by DDoS attacks and other malicious efforts to disrupt service. These distributed denial-of-service attacks aim to overwhelm servers with junk traffic until they crash.
Coinbase has extensive DDoS protection and mitigation in place. But the barrage of attacks inevitably slips past defenses and takes down Coinbase periodically. No site is 100% immune to DDoS campaigns.
6. Database Replication Issues Cause Inconsistency
Here‘s a more subtle technical cause of problems – Coinbase handles enormous transaction volumes across global datacenters. Keeping databases synchronized and consistent across regions is tricky.
When database replicas fall out of sync due to replication lag or other issues, it leads to inconsistent or missing user account balances and transaction histories. These fragile database clusters underpin much of the Coinbase platform.
7. Cascading Failures and Human Errors
Finally, once one part of their complex system fails, it often triggers a domino effect across other interdependent components. These cascading failures rapidly amplify the initial problem into a full-blown outage.
Coinbase engineers also simply make mistakes when operating or modifying such a chaos of interconnected systems. As they say, to err is human – especially under pressure to fix an degraded system quickly.
How to Check If Coinbase Is Down Right Now
When you can‘t access Coinbase during periods of peak volatility or heavy trading, how do you confirm whether it‘s just you or a wider outage?
Here are a few ways to check Coinbase‘s system status and identify problems:
Check the Coinbase Status Page
Coinbase maintains a status page at https://status.coinbase.com that offers real-time status monitoring for all their API, trading, security, and wallet systems. It will highlight any active incidents or degradations causing platform issues.
I bookmark this page and it‘s my go-to resource whenever Coinbase starts acting up.
Follow @CoinbaseSupport on Twitter
Coinbase support reps often tweet updates from the @CoinbaseSupport account during an outage. I turn on mobile notifications from them to get pinged when Coinbase acknowledges issues.
They typically share expected resolution times once the engineering team identifies the problem source. Just ignore all the complaining replies from angry users!
Ask Other Users
Check out status tracking sites like Downdetector that rely on user outage reports to assess problems for popular websites and apps. Spikes in user complaints help confirm when downtime is widespread rather than an isolated issue on your end.
The Coinbase and Coinbase Pro subreddits are also handy for checking in during crashes. Misery loves company!
Try Coinbase Alternatives
If you can access crypto services like Gemini, Kraken, Binance, or FTX but Coinbase isn‘t working, that points to a problem on their side rather than with your device or internet connection.
Bouncing between a few exchanges is always smart to pinpoint where the issue lies.
Troubleshooting Steps When Coinbase Is Down
Once I‘ve confirmed from Coinbase‘s status page or Twitter that there‘s definitely an ongoing outage, here are a few dos and don‘ts while waiting for it to come back up:
Avoid Repeated Login Attempts
It‘s tempting to keep force-refreshing the Coinbase app or website over and over when you‘re locked out. But this excessive hammering just contributes to the problem and further overloads their strained servers. Be patient and avoid spamming logins.
Never Reattempt Failed Transactions
If a deposit, withdrawal, or trade fails during an outage, do NOT keep retrying it. These pending transactions may eventually go through when systems recover. Repeated attempts risk creating duplicate transfers or trades you‘ll have to undo later. Monitor status closely instead.
Track Updates on Social Channels
Coinbase support reps will often post progress reports and estimated resolution times on Twitter. Following these real-time updates helps you decide whether to wait it out or pivot to other crypto platforms in the meantime.
Use Alternative Exchanges
Outages may force you to use backups like Gemini or FTX to make urgent trades. Just be cautious of transfer delays – move crypto and funds back to Coinbase only after they declare the outage fully resolved. Avoid getting assets stuck in limbo across exchanges.
Contact Support If It Drags On
If an outage lasts more than 2-3 hours with minimal updates from Coinbase, it can‘t hurt to reach out to their customer support for guidance. Expect delayed responses though – you‘re not the only frustrated user in line!
Stay Informed on Social Media
In addition to the @CoinbaseSupport account, follow their Coinbase, Coinbase Pro, and Coinbase Wallet Twitter feeds for status announcements after outages. Turning on tweet notifications ensures you‘re immediately in the loop when systems are back online.
Document Details In Case of Prolonged Downtime
To recover quick access after an extended outage, ensure you have the following details documented somewhere safe:
- Your Coinbase account number
- Login email and password
- 2FA restoration codes
- API keys for integrated apps
- Wire transfer info
- Account balances and transaction histories
Minimizing Disruptions During Future Outages
While we can‘t prevent Coinbase outages completely, there are some best practices to minimize headaches:
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Diversify Across 2-3 Exchanges – Maintain accounts on multiple platforms as backups for trading, deposits, and withdrawals when Coinbase falters.
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Store Crypto Off Exchanges – Keep the bulk of your portfolio in an offline hardware wallet and only keep trading amounts on exchanges.
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Use Advanced Exchange Features – Limit orders, OCO orders, and Coinbase Pro help manage volatility when systems are glitchy.
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Take Time-Sensitive Actions Early – Avoid initiating critical transfers or trades in the final hours before major deadlines in case an outage strikes.
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Enable 2FA for Added Security – Two-factor authentication keeps your account secure even if you temporarily can‘t access it. Store backup 2FA codes offline.
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Follow Coinbase‘s Social Accounts – Turn on notifications for @CoinbaseSupport and @Coinbase to stay updated on outages in real-time.
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Practice Patience and Perspective – Outages are an inevitable growing pain for any industry-leading platform. Focus on other tasks until services are back up.
No system has 100% uptime, so managing your frustrations and expectations is key. But following the advice in this guide will help you troubleshoot and recover quicker when the unavoidable outages hit Coinbase.
Hopefully Coinbase‘s infrastructure and reliability continues maturing to meet rising customer demand. In the meantime, arm yourself with the tips above so you‘re prepared to handle the next downtime smoothly! Let me know on Twitter if you have any other questions.
