Coinbase experienced a service disruption lasting more than two hours after overheating at an Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center in the US-EAST-1 region forced an emergency shutdown. The incident, which impacted trading and account access, was publicly announced by the exchange, citing rising server room temperatures that threatened system stability.
AWS reported that a power loss at its North Virginia facility affected some hardware, with cooling system recovery progressing slower than expected. The provider shifted traffic away from the impacted Availability Zone, but services tied to the facility still saw impairments. Coinbase assured customers that "your funds are safe," while directing users to the AWS status page for updates.
To prevent further instability, Coinbase will resume trading in phases, initially placing all markets in "Cancel Only" mode—allowing order cancellations before new trades can be placed. No specific timeline for full restoration was provided, but the exchange stated it will proceed as systems are verified stable.
The event reignited concerns about the crypto industry’s reliance on centralized cloud infrastructure. Past outages in October 2025 affected Coinbase, Robinhood, MetaMask, and other platforms, and a postmortem by Coinbase later acknowledged that AWS failures had hindered its ability to scale and monitor services. While no funds were lost or data breached, the disruption highlights the need for enhanced redundancy and disaster recovery in exchange operations.
