Coinbase Outage Hits During Bitcoin’s Surge Above $85,000

Coinbase’s website and mobile services suffered an outage on Monday, September 21, as Bitcoin climbed above $85,000. Some customers could not trade or view account balances during the rally, according to Coinbase’s status updates.

The exchange acknowledged the disruption at 4:21 p.m. Pacific time and said customer funds remained safe. It reported a fix at 5:23 p.m. and marked the incident resolved eight minutes later. Coinbase did not give a cause.

Bitcoin briefly topped $85,000 for the first time since January, after gaining more than 5% in 24 hours, The Block reported. The price move coincided with a broad rebound in Asian and European shares.

The rally also forced traders betting on falling prices to exit. CoinDesk and The Block cited CoinGlass data showing roughly $648 million in crypto short positions liquidated over a 24-hour period. CCN reported a higher figure of about $919 million, underscoring how totals vary with the data snapshot and time window.

When a leveraged short position is liquidated, an exchange closes it, often by buying back the asset. That buying can add to upward price pressure, though the liquidation total alone does not show how much of Bitcoin’s rise came from forced trades.

Bitcoin reached as high as $85,326 on September 21, according to CoinGecko data cited by Yahoo Finance. Its move above $85,000 marked an eight-month high, but the outage left some Coinbase customers unable to respond through the platform while services were impaired.

Coinbase has not said how many users were affected, and the outage notice did not identify a technical cause. The company’s status page later showed its website, mobile app and Advanced Trade operating normally.