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Trading Services Were Restored After Overnight Disruption
TL;DR
- Coinbase suffered an overnight trading outage after AWS failures affected multiple zones.
- Coinbase traced the issue to AWS Availability Zone use1-az4 in US-EAST-1.
- All Coinbase Exchange markets were later re-enabled after a phased restart.
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Coinbase suffered a multi-hour trading outage on May 7, 2026, after failures across Amazon Web Services infrastructure disrupted core trading services and blocked users from executing trades on the exchange’s web and mobile platforms.
Coinbase Support said the incident began around 8 p.m. ET, when Coinbase systems detected high error rates across multiple services. Coinbase later traced the disruption to failures in AWS Availability Zone use1-az4 inside the US-EAST-1 Region, with the issue extending beyond the kind of single-zone failure the exchange said its systems were designed to handle.
Coinbase Support said in a May 8 post on X, “We observed failures impacting multiple AWS zones,” adding that the failures caused an extended outage of core trading services. The outage was tied to overheating that affected several AWS availability zones in the US-EAST-1 region, preventing users from trading while AWS teams worked to restore temperature controls and related Amazon Managed Services.
Coinbase Used a Phased Restart Before Reopening Markets
Coinbase said its recovery process would not immediately restore full trading access. The exchange planned to first place all markets into “Cancel Only” mode before allowing normal trading to resume, a phased approach that kept market activity limited during the restart.
Coinbase later posted at 3:48 a.m. on May 8 that all markets had been re-enabled for trading on Coinbase Exchange. After restoration, Coinbase said the primary issue had been fully resolved, but it did not disclose how many users were affected, how long each individual trading function was unavailable, or which services saw the highest error rates.
Coinbase said its team would conduct a full analysis and cautioned that details could change as its investigation continues and as more information becomes available from AWS’s official retrospective once published.
The disruption also affected other platforms, including FanDuel, showing that the AWS failure was not isolated to Coinbase even though Coinbase became the crypto-facing focus of the incident.
Outage Hit After Coinbase’s First-Quarter Results
The timing added pressure for Coinbase because the outage came immediately after the exchange released its first-quarter 2026 earnings, which included both top-line and bottom-line misses.
Coinbase’s May 7 first-quarter earnings release also highlighted record crypto trading volume market share, $202 billion in quarterly trading volume, annualized retail derivatives revenue of more than $200 million, and $294 billion in assets held on the platform during the quarter.
Coinbase had also announced earlier in the same week that it was laying off 14% of its staff, partly attributing the reduction to productivity gains from artificial intelligence. Coinbase had said AI enables even non-technical teams to ship production code.
FAQ
What caused the Coinbase outage?
Coinbase traced it to AWS failures affecting multiple zones.
When did Coinbase detect the issue?
Coinbase Support said systems flagged high error rates around 8 p.m. ET.
Were Coinbase markets restored?
Yes. Coinbase said all Coinbase Exchange markets were re-enabled after the phased restart.
Did Coinbase disclose affected user numbers?
No. Coinbase did not disclose how many users were affected.
This article has been refined and enhanced by ChatGPT.
