Coinbase halts BTC trading after AWS Northern Virginia heat

Coinbase placed markets on hold Thursday evening after an Amazon Web Services data center in Northern Virginia (US‑EAST‑1, availability zone use1‑az4) experienced a spike in temperature that affected its systems. The exchange flagged degraded performance around 6 p.m. Pacific and stopped Bitcoin trades.

Coinbase posted that the disruption was “related to a broader AWS outage” and assured customers that “your funds are safe.” The company said it would “begin the process to re-enable trading” and that all markets would be placed in “Cancel Only” mode before reopening, allowing users to cancel existing orders but not submit new ones.

Traders reported immediate impacts on liquidity and price formation. Some users said no Bitcoin trades occurred on the exchange for more than an hour and that the Coinbase order book showed prices well above other venues. Several customers experienced failed order submissions on web and mobile apps.

AWS acknowledged rising temperatures at a Northern Virginia data center had disrupted services in the US‑EAST‑1 region. The cloud provider reported “early signs of recovery,” stating additional cooling capacity allowed recovery of some affected server racks and that teams were working to restore more racks “in a controlled and safe manner.”

Coinbase and AWS reported no loss of customer funds. Coinbase directed users to the AWS Health Dashboard for updates as both companies worked to restore full service.