You’re staring at a spinning loading wheel or a "503 Service Unavailable" screen. It’s frustrating. Your money is in there, and suddenly, you can't reach it. If you've been asking why is coinbase down, you're definitely not alone. It happens way more often than we’d like for a multi-billion dollar company. But here's the thing: it’s rarely just "one thing" that breaks.
Honestly, the reasons range from boring server updates to massive, "everything-is-on-fire" traffic spikes.
The Cloud Giant Problem: When AWS Trips
Most people don’t realize that Coinbase doesn’t run on its own secret servers in a basement somewhere. They use Amazon Web Services (AWS). Specifically, they rely heavily on the us-east-1 region in North Virginia.
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When Amazon has a bad day, everyone has a bad day.
Take October 20, 2025, for example. A massive disruption in AWS DynamoDB (that's a database service) basically paralyzed Coinbase for over three hours. It wasn't even a Coinbase "bug"—their foundation just crumbled. When AWS loses DNS resolution or the ability to launch new "instances" (virtual servers), Coinbase can’t scale to meet your login requests.
You get stuck at the front door. The app won't load, your balance shows $0.00, and panic sets in. It’s a classic single point of failure that the industry is still struggling to fix.
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Why Volatility Is the Real Enemy
Have you noticed that Coinbase always seems to go down exactly when Bitcoin is mooning or crashing? That's not a conspiracy. It's math.
When the price of Bitcoin swings by 10% in an hour, the "load" on the servers doesn't just double; it explodes by 10x or 20x. Everyone opens the app at the same time to check their gains or panic-sell. This creates a "thundering herd" effect.
- API Bottlenecks: The connections between the app and the trading engine get clogged.
- Database Locking: So many people are trying to write transactions at once that the database essentially says, "I'm full," and stops responding.
- Load Balancers Fail: The traffic is so heavy that the "traffic cop" server directing users to healthy spots just quits.
The Maintenance You Weren't Expecting
Sometimes the answer to why is coinbase down is actually planned. But let’s be real, we never read those emails.
Coinbase frequently performs "degraded performance" maintenance to patch security holes or update the protocol for specific coins like Ethereum or Polygon. Just recently, on January 12, 2026, they had a scheduled maintenance for the Cosmos Network that caused about an hour of downtime.
Then there are the "unacknowledged" glitches. Third-party trackers like StatusGator often catch 15-minute login outages that never actually make it onto the official Coinbase status page. If you can’t get in, but the status page says "All Systems Operational," it’s usually a regional routing issue or a silent server error that hasn't triggered their internal alarms yet.
Regulatory Drama and the "Software" Side
Lately, it’s not just technical. In January 2026, we saw some weirdness because of the CLARITY Act drama in the US Senate. When Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong pulled support for the bill, it sent shockwaves through the market.
While a policy debate doesn't "crash" a server directly, it causes massive surges in trading volume and "put-option" buying that can overwhelm the platform's ability to handle high-frequency data.
Also, don't rule out DDoS attacks. Being the biggest target in the US crypto space means hackers are constantly throwing "fake" traffic at their gates. If the defensive filters get too aggressive, they might accidentally block you—a real user—along with the bots.
What You Should Do When It’s Down
It’s easy to feel helpless, but you've got options.
First, stop refreshing the app every three seconds. You're just contributing to the "thundering herd" problem. Check the official Coinbase Status page first, but verify it with DownDetector or X (formerly Twitter). If the status page says everything is fine but everyone on X is screaming, the outage is real and they just haven't updated the dashboard yet.
If you trade frequently, you absolutely need a "Plan B."
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Don't keep 100% of your assets on one exchange. Having a secondary account on a platform like Kraken or using a self-custodial wallet (like Coinbase Wallet or MetaMask) ensures you can still move funds even if the main exchange interface is toast.
Actionable Steps for the Next Outage:
- Switch to Desktop: Sometimes the mobile API is down while the website works, or vice versa.
- Clear Cache: If the "down" status is over but you still can't log in, your app might be holding onto a "bad" session. Force quit and clear the cache.
- Use the Pro/Advanced Interface: Often, the "simple" buy/sell interface crashes first because it’s the most used. The Advanced Trading side might stay stable longer.
- Wait it out: Most "unplanned" outages are resolved in under two hours.
The reality is that as long as crypto is this volatile and reliant on centralized cloud providers, downtime is part of the deal. It’s the price we pay for being in a market that literally never sleeps.