Coinbase Halts Trading As Rush To Exits Picks Up Steam

Investing, News, Regulation | December 22, 2017 By:

Coinbase, the largest US cryptocurrency exchange, halted trading this morning. The service cited high traffic in its decision to disable buys and sells.

Bitcoin is down almost 30 percent this morning, one of its biggest drops this year. Some exchanges had bitcoin selling in the $11,000 range today, a steep decline from its $20,000 high just days ago.

Coinbase has angered customers in the past when it has locked up during high volume periods. Customers wishing to buy or take advantage of blood in the streets bargains can’t execute trades. The service has experienced at least five such outages in the last year, even as its market cap rose over the magic “unicorn” level of a billion dollars. It is vowing to bring on hundreds of additional customer service people in the new year.

This was not a good week for Coinbase. CEO Brian Armstrong noted in a blog post announcing the addition of Bitcoin Cash to the service that potential insider trading may have occurred before the BCH debut. The company said it was investigating the matter.