Amazon Web Services Outage Disrupts Coinbase, Robinhood, and Mercado Libre: What Happened?

• What Caused the AWS Outage?
• Which Platforms Were Affected?
• Market Impact and User Reactions
• Historical Context: AWS’ Rocky Reliability
• Could This Have Been Prevented?
• The Silver Lining
• FAQs

On October 21, 2025, a major AWS outage sent shockwaves through the crypto and fintech world, knocking out services for giants like Coinbase, Robinhood, and Mercado Libre. The disruption, which lasted several hours, exposed just how reliant the financial sector is on cloud infrastructure. Here’s a deep dive into what went wrong, how it impacted markets, and why even the biggest players aren’t immune to tech hiccups.

What Caused the AWS Outage?

AWS hasn’t released full details yet, but early reports suggest a cascading failure in their US-East-1 data center—the same region that caused headaches in 2021. According to DownDetector, error rates spiked at 02:30 UTC, with services like Lambda and EC2 hit hardest. "It’s like a traffic jam in the cloud," quipped one BTCC engineer (who asked to remain anonymous). "When AWS sneezes, half the internet catches a cold."

Which Platforms Were Affected?

The outage created a domino effect across financial services:

• Coinbase: Trading halted for 47 minutes during peak Asian market hours
• Robinhood: App showed incorrect portfolio balances for over 2 hours
• Mercado Libre: Payment processing delays across Latin America

Interestingly, decentralized exchanges like Uniswap kept humming along—a fact crypto maximalists won’t let us forget anytime soon.

Market Impact and User Reactions

Coinmarketcap data shows BTC dipped 1.8% during the outage, though it rebounded quickly. The real damage was to trader confidence. "I couldn’t close my Leveraged position," complained Reddit user CryptoKnight420. "AWS needs to get its act together—this isn’t some cat video website we’re talking about."

Historical Context: AWS’ Rocky Reliability

This marks AWS’ third major outage since 2023. Remember the S3 apocalypse of 2024? Exactly. Each incident follows a pattern: one small failure triggers disproportionate chaos. As cloud architect Maria Gonzalez told CNBC: "We’ve put all our eggs in Amazon’s basket, and sometimes the basket springs a leak."

Could This Have Been Prevented?

In theory, yes. Multi-cloud strategies exist, but they’re expensive. "Nobody wants to pay for redundancy until the servers go down," admits a BTCC analyst. Some companies are now exploring hybrid solutions, keeping critical systems on-premises as a backup.

The Silver Lining

Outages like this accelerate innovation. Several projects (including one from ex-AWS engineers) are building decentralized cloud alternatives. Will 2026 be the year we finally break up with AWS? Only time will tell.

FAQs

How long did the AWS outage last?

Approximately 3 hours and 15 minutes, with full restoration by 05:45 UTC on October 21, 2025.

Did the outage affect Bitcoin’s price?

Temporarily—BTC dropped to $67,200 during the outage but recovered to $68,900 within 4 hours (per TradingView data).

Are there alternatives to AWS for financial services?

Yes, though none match AWS’ scale. Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure saw minor traffic spikes during the incident.