Coinbase outages hit as crypto plummets: BTC, ETH & DOGE down

Bitcoin, Ethereum, DOGE, and other cryptocurrencies are plummeting today, which means it's not a great time for popular trading platform Coinbase to be encountering issues. The company – which bills itself as "the easiest place to buy and sell crypto" – is experiencing problems today, which appear to be limiting users' ability to trade.

"We're seeing some issues on Coinbase and Coinbase Pro and we're aware some features may not be functioning completely normal," the company confirmed on its Twitter support account today. "We're investigating what's going on right now, and as soon as we know more we'll let you know."

Coinbase and Coinbase Pro are both free to sign up to. However they differ in the interface they present to users. While the standard Coinbase UI pares things back to a more simplified panel, with a small selection of trading options, Coinbase Pro caters for more advanced and experienced traders with charts and extra features.

Whichever you're trying to use today, though, you may find yourself unable to buy the dip this morning – or, alternatively, unable to offload your crypto as the market slumps. Coinbase reports partial outages on both its website and mobile apps, as well as for its API. The company began investigating "intermittent downtime" on those platforms at 6:12am PDT today.

At the same time, Ethereum (ETH) is seeing "degraded performance," Coinbase said, particularly for those who want to get their money out. "We are investigating delays in ETH and ERC-20 withdrawals due to network congestion. All funds remain safe and secure. Deposits are unaffected."

Unsurprisingly, the news hasn't gone down well among users. Twitter has been vocal in criticizing Coinbase, including accusing it of preventing them from selling their ETH so as to attempt to stabilize the market. It's reminiscent of the volatile stock situation earlier in the year, where trading platforms like Robinhood opted to clamp down on sales and purchases of shares in Gamestock and other companies.

Today, meanwhile, is a reminder that while cryptocurrencies have been seeing an uptick in popularity of late, their value can just as readily plummet. According to Coinbase, the market overall is down over 22-percent in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin is currently down over 18-percent, DOGE is down more than 25-percent, and Ethereum is down around 28-percent.

Only a week ago, in fact, a single Ethereum coin would cost you over $4,300. Currently, that same coin is trading at around $2,500.