Coinbase website down as crypto exchange cites ‘system-wide outage’

United States 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 shows 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 shared news of the outage in a May 14 post to X, saying they were investigating the issue and working on a solution. It reiterated that users’ funds are safe.

Coinbase is experiencing a system wide outage. We are investigating this issue and working on a solution. Please see for updates. Your funds are safe.

— Coinbase Support (@CoinbaseSupport) May 14, 2024

On Feb. 28, Coinbase — along with several other exchanges — suffered temporary outages stemming from a rapid uptick in crypto trading activity during a Bitcoin (BTC) flash crash that saw the price of the asset fall nearly 10% before spiking back up.

While outages are frustrating for users of crypto exchanges, pundits on Crypto Twitter 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.

Related: GameStop sparked the 2021 memecoin bull run — will history repeat itself?

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

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