Coinbase Users Report Missing Balances Due to Third-Party Glitch
Coinbase users woke up to a nasty surprise—vanishing account balances. The culprit? A third-party service glitch, not a direct exchange hack. The incident highlights the fragile, interconnected plumbing of modern crypto finance.
The Domino Effect
When an external data provider stumbles, the fallout ripples across platforms. Users saw zeros where their portfolios should be—a heart-stopping moment for any investor. Coinbase scrambled to identify the external fault, assuring customers their assets were safe on the blockchain, just temporarily invisible on the front end.
Trust, But Verify (The Blockchain)
This isn't about stolen keys or breached wallets. It's a data display failure, a reminder that the sleek apps we rely on are layered atop complex, sometimes brittle, data pipelines. The real ledger—the immutable blockchain—remained untouched. Yet, perception often trumps reality in markets driven by sentiment.
A Systemic Sneeze
Single points of failure in the crypto ecosystem can cause widespread panic. The glitch forced a public reckoning on dependency—exchanges leaning on third parties for critical data feeds. It's the financial equivalent of a cloud service outage taking down your entire business.
Transparency as a Band-Aid
Coinbase's rapid communication likely prevented a full-blown panic sell-off. They pinpointed the issue, communicated the external cause, and worked to restore visibility. In an industry where trust is the primary currency, swift, honest damage control is non-negotiable.
Just another day where the 'future of finance' gets a stark reminder about the old-fashioned importance of reliable infrastructure—and where a simple data hiccup can briefly make your net worth look like a bad joke.
Coinbase users face repeated outages, delays, and access issues
Due to a third party issue, some users may be experiencing incorrect or missing balances and incorrect price quotes for assets on Base. Our team is monitoring this situation and will provide an update shortly. Your funds are safe.
— Coinbase Support (@CoinbaseSupport) January 21, 2026
On the Coinbase status page, it announced that regions such as the Philippines had limited access to the platform during the incident. However, the crypto exchange went on to state that access was still possible through alternative networks, such as Wi-Fi or international networks, if a user was traveling.
After the investigation, the crypto exchange identified “Degraded performance Base Network” as the issue and later announced it had resolved the incident.
According to the status page, the current incident follows a series of similar incidents in which users experience problems while using the platform.
On January 20, the exchange reported that some users were experiencing delays in sending and receiving on the Ronin network. However, it confirmed that Buys, Sells, and Fiat withdrawals/deposits remained unaffected.
Similar to the recent case, the crypto exchange went on to reassure users that it will work on the situation and provide updates if it changes. It also assured users that all their funds WOULD be safe during the investigation process.
On January 19, Coinbase experienced delays in sending on the Polygon Network. The payment service platform confirmed that during the incident, receiving, buying, selling, and fiat withdrawals/deposits were not affected.
In the last three months, the platform has reported more than 86 incidents, with January reporting the fewest, at almost 17. Of this, two incidents are still scheduled for maintenance.
Coinbase suffers from AWS outage, network, and system failures
Late last year, a massive AWS US-East-1 regional outage caused a major service disruption for Coinbase and many other businesses. The outage occurred in two waves. Wave 1 occurred approximately from 3 AM to 7 AM ET, and wave 2 occurred approximately from 11 AM to 6 PM ET. The outage impacted Coinbase customers, from being unable to access the platform to trading disruptions. Transfers, withdrawals, and deposits were delayed or failed. According to the crypto exchange, the AWS US-East-1 regional outage also affected Market data, staking, onboarding, and cryptocurrency send/receive.
During downtime, the crypto service provider reported that users experienced poor performance for a total of 3 hours and 17 minutes. The report revealed that all Coinbase services were back up and running around 6:45 p.m. ET after AWS made changes to several technologies on which the platform depends, including EC2 network state propagation.
In another incident in February 2024, the trading platform experienced technical issues that led many users to see a balance of zero when opening their accounts.
“We are aware that some users may see a zero balance across their accounts and may experience errors in buying or selling,” Coinbase said in a statement. It then advised users to follow the system outage on its status page.
Users’ complaints continue to arise every day. Since 2016, Coinbase users have filed more than 11,000 complaints with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission, mostly related to customer service.
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