FTX Stutters as Crypto Markets Slide CPI Numbers
- Most traders point to FTX’s API connection
- Market volatility has a history of overloading crypto exchanges
When markets are volatile, crypto traders salivate like a husky after the dinner bell. If their trade of choice is experiencing downtime just when they can’t wait to place a trade, Twitter is a great place to vent.
Following the release of higher-than-expected US inflation numbers Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. ET, markets nosedived. Bitcoin, for example, fell 6% over the next 25 minutes.
FTX customers started complaining about API crashes and intermittent screen refreshes.
“FTX down again? It’s time for a new browser,” wrote one user, referring to previous interactions with FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, in which he suggested slow browsers were to blame.
This time, Bankman-Fried put on its customer service hat and sprang into action.
“…I’m frustrated inside that we didn’t make this thing smoother sooner, I woke up half of our [developer] team to get things rolling out within the hour,” Bankman-Fried tweeted.
Some users reported not being able to use the platform for about a minute or receiving erroneous notifications jurisdictional blocks.
Crypto exchanges have a history of struggling during brief periods of peak demand, sometimes even sparking lawsuits as disgruntled traders band together to seek compensation.
An FTX spokesperson confirmed to Blockworks that the technical issue was related to the volatility spike, but did not qualify it as an outage.
“There was no downtime, the exchange was running all the time. Some users accessing it through a browser found that their web page refreshed frequently, which made using the exchange slower and heavier,” the spokesperson said.
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Macauley Peterson
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