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The world’s largest crypto-trading platforms were hit by disruption as digital currencies from Bitcoin to Ethereum slipped Wednesday morning in a collapse that wiped out billions of dollars in market value.
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has temporarily disabled withdrawals from Ethereum, citing network congestion, while Coinbase Global Inc. reported an “intermittent downtime” on its platform, before saying that he had identified and fixed the problem. Kraken said it was working to correct some customer disruptions.
Brian Gomez, 24, of Lodi, Calif., Was trying to take advantage of falling prices and buy Dogecoin, XRP and Shiba Inu coins on Crypto.com on Wednesday morning, but said he couldn’t.
“Each time I log in it takes a minute and once I log in none of my information will be loaded,” Gomez said. “Crypto.com was the only place I could buy Shiba and XRP and I missed my chance to participate.”
The company was working in the morning to restore the performance of the app, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek said on Twitter. At 11:40 am, he said things were back to normal and apologized “to those who didn’t buy the dip”.
The platforms failed as the massive crypto rally – which inflated Bitcoin’s value beyond $ 1,000 billion and added billions of absurd digital tokens overnight – collapsed. Bitcoin plunged 30% to around $ 30,000, its lowest value since January 1. It then rose to almost $ 40,000 before falling back.
US regulators have little oversight over crypto trading platforms. The Securities and Exchange Commission regulates securities, which Bitcoin is not.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission controls futures contracts, not the trading of underlying tokens. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler urged Congress this month to give regulators clear authority over exchanges, which he says lack adequate protections for investors.
Crypto exchanges have frequently bloated during Bitcoin’s historic rally, leaving investors unable to buy or sell for hours at a time.
Last year Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted that the company would add capacity – servers and customer support – to deal with the increased traffic.
Some people on Twitter noted on Wednesday that Robinhood Markets, which has already faced disruption during large crypto price swings, was promoting in its app a customer support option over the phone – something that he had been criticized for not having proposed until February.
Crypto bull and billionaire Mike Novogratz, meanwhile, said the morning crypto collapse looked like a surrender. It’s going to take a while, but prices will bottom out, consolidate and then rebound for a while, he told CNBC. “The story has gone nowhere, the crypto revolution has taken place,” he said.
– With help from Joanna Ossinger, Donald Moore and Jesse Westbrook
(Adds comment from Crypto.com CEO, details throughout)
Before he’s here, he’s on the Bloomberg terminal.
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