Tag: Coinbase

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Coinbase Crypto Exchange Crypto News

Coinbase’s $15 Million QR Code Super Bowl Ad Crashes Site Within a Minute

Coinbase’s Super Bowl ad, basically a US$15 million QR code, saw its platform crash within a minute during the February 14 NFL final playoff. The simplistic, but initially successful, marketing technique drew thousands of Super Bowl spectators to the site, which was ill-equipped to handle the influx:

The ad itself was simply a colourful QR code bouncing around the screen, akin to the ‘DVD video’ logo. Scanning the code took new users to a platform where they could sign up for US$5 worth of free bitcoin – with the deal available until the following day. Not every viewer was able to get that far, however:

Coinbase’s chief product officer Surojit Chatterjee took to Twitter to explain that the platform “saw more traffic than [it had] ever encountered” and that the issue had since been rectified. The crash lasted no longer than an hour; long enough, however, for Coinbase’s exposure to backfire. Coinbase shares took a 5 percent dive as many expressed their frustrations across social media.

The US$15 million ad was live only for a single minute timeslot.

Previous Coinbase Troubles

While Coinbase’s Super Bowl outage was the result of positive consumer interaction, the exchange has suffered previous negative performance issues. In late 2021, hackers stole crypto from 6,000 of the exchange’s users. It was suggested that the hackers had managed to gain access to personal user information in the lead-up, likely from external sources. However, a bug in the exchange’s multi-factor authentication was the cause.

Earlier last year, Coinbase had another significant crash that prevented investor attempts to purchase. Bitcoin and Ethereum had dipped in value, which saw a sudden rise in buyer interest. The platform’s inability to handle the response saw its stock price dip accordingly.

By Lauren Claxton, Crypto News Guest Author

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Bitcoin Coinbase Institutions

Bitcoin Whale Moves AU$1 Billion of BTC into Storage

According to the popular blockchain tracking and analysis service Whale Alert, a user has moved 13,204 BTC worth nearly AU$1 billion out of Coinbase and into an ‘unknown wallet’. This typically indicates a wealthy individual or large institution buying Bitcoin and moving it into ‘cold storage’ such as a hard wallet for safekeeping.

The transactions happened over a one-hour period and involved 34 individual transactions of around 380 BTC each worth approximately US$21 million each. The choice of number could be a reference to Bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap but it’s probably just coincidental.

Naturally, the moves attracted attention, with several Twitter comments questioning whether this could be another big buy from Michael Saylor’s Microstrategy investment firm. However, these moves all occurred during a Sunday, which would be odd for a company or traditional financial institution.

Big BTC Moves

Although this recent transfer amounts to a considerable amount of cash, it’s relatively small compared to some previous big moves. Last year in June, just after Bitcoin’s 3rd halvening, a whale moved 132,255 BTC in three separate transfers, amounting to US$1.3 billion at the time.

In the number of actual coins moved, even that amount remains comparatively small. Way back in 2011, a single transaction was completed involving 550,000 BTC, worth a whopping US$30.8 billion today but a meager US$1.3 million at the time.

Bitcoin Continues to Push Higher

Large moves such as these indicate big players entering the market and placing their coins in longterm storage with the expectation of further growth. If an individual or company with that much money has such strong faith in Bitcoin then one can only assume a fair amount of research has gone into their decision.

Just this year alone, both Bitcoin’s individual market cap and the wider cryptocurrency market cap have almost doubled in value. Bitcoin recently crossed the significant $1 trillion mark, climbing from US$530 million on December 31st, 2020.

The price of one BTC hit a new all-time high of above US$58,600 yesterday before suffering a mild rejection that has taken it back down to US$56,000. However, the price remains above the upward trend line and has already begun to make a decent recovery.

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Bitcoin Crypto Exchange

Major Crypto Exchanges Goes Down as Bitcoin Exceeds US$20,000

Major Crypto Exchanges Goes Down as Bitcoin Exceeds US$20,000

Two leading digital currency exchanges, Coinbase and Binance, reportedly went down following the latest Bitcoin (BTC) move to US$20,000. These exchanges usually face connectivity issues due to high demand and influx of traffic whenever there is a price rally in the crypto market. The new Bitcoin price holds quite an exciting time for Bitcoin investors as the leading crypto makes price discovery.

Coinbase, Binance Surfers Server Downtime

On Twitter, a crypto user noted that Coinbase was experiencing connectivity issues due to high traffic. A further glance at Downdetector showed a spike in new reports of downtime on the exchange at 3:17 PM UTC. This was after the cryptocurrency crossed the long-awaited US$20K level.

It’s worth noting that Coinbase also experienced a downtime last month during the market rally. At that time, the founder of the exchange, Brian Armstrong, assured that they will “add additional capacity (both in servers and customer support) to deal with increased traffic.” Judging by this, the exchange may have seen bigger traffic to cause another downtime again, same with Binance.

The largest exchange by market capitalization briefly went down amid the spike in Bitcoin. The downtime was also caused by massive traffic on the exchange, as CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao (CZ) confirmed, saying that they are working to add more servers to handle the traffic.

Bitcoin at Over US$20,000

As Bitcoin broke through the US$20K resistance, a majority of addresses holding BTC were reported to be in a state of profit. At the time of writing, the cryptocurrency is trading at the price of US$20,644 on Coinmarketcap. The surge today also pushed the crypto’s market capitalization to another all-time high this year, thereby strengthening its position as the “king crypto.” At the moment, Bitcoin’s market capitalization sits around US$383 billion.