Coinbase, one of the biggest bitcoin marketplaces in the U.S., said Friday that trading was temporarily disabled amid a price rout in cryptocurrencies.
“Investigating – All buys and sells have been temporarily disabled. We are working on a fix and apologize for any inconvenience,” Coinbase said on its status website at 11:11 a.m., ET.
The company added in a subsequent statement that “due to today’s high traffic, buys and sells may be temporarily offline. We’re working on restoring full availability as soon as possible.”
Bitcoin traded about 18 percent lower near $12,800 on Coinbase as of 11:39 a.m. ET. Earlier, the digital currency had fallen as low as $10,400, down 44 percent from its record high hit Sunday.
Coinbase’s mobile app, one of the most popular overall applications in the Apple App store this month, is a leading way in the U.S. to buy and sell major digital currencies bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin. The company added trading for bitcoin’s offshoot bitcoin cash in a rocky rollout this week.
On Thursday, Coinbase had temporarily disabled trading at 5:57 p.m. ET, according to its status website. The issue was resolved within 15 minutes.
Coinbase has struggled in recent months to keep up with high demand. On Dec. 12, the company temporarily suspended buys and sells of ethereum twice in one day.
