Both Coinbase and Kraken were down or experiencing delay issues intermittently on Tuesday, amid market turmoil, according to user complaints on Twitter.
The news came on the heels of revelations that crypto exchange Binance intends to acquire rival FTX earlier yesterday, Cointelegraph reported.
According to Twitter users, services were limited on both exchanges, with issues with connecting to the platforms and unconfirmed rumors of withdrawals being halted.
In its support profile, Coinbase said it's experiencing network connectivity issues for Coinbase.com, Coinbase Pro, and Coinbase Prime. This can make it difficult to sign in, and if you're already signed in, you might experience slow loading across the web and mobile app, claiming that the issue is related to the high level of new user signups and conversions to the platform today.
Kraken did not comment on the issues on its channels, but did highlight that it uses Proof of Reserves audits, which allow clients to check balances held on exchanges and backed assets as well.
With Proof of Reserves (PoR), an independent audit is performed by a third party to verify that the custodian's assets are held as required.
The market turmoil was triggered by the November 8 announcement by FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman Fried, or SBF, of an agreement for a strategic deal with Binance, with the goal of acquiring FTX after Binance decided to liquidate 23 million FTT tokens, resulting in Liquidity crunch in FTX. The deal has been compared to a chess move by some, insinuating that Binance's strategy deliberately led to the deal.
The thread of tweets triggered a sell-off of the FTX token that broke below the pattern's support line. The sell-off has continued and the token is down over 76% over the past 24 hours, and is negotiating at $5.09 at the time of this writing.
