Amazon’s AWS Cloud Servers Blocked Some Crypto Exchanges From Operation

Issues with Amazon’s Tokyo-based servers caused global problems for Asian crypto exchanges, as the caching services seized operation. Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao alarmed about the problem in Twitter, stating that “Amazon’s servers are returning 500 Internal Server Error, blocking access to APIs related to the processing of withdrawals.”

The most probable reason for the server shutdowns is overheating, as crypto exchange KuCoin announced that an overheating issue in AWS’s servers caused some of their services to become completely unavailable. KuCoin further clarifies that their engineers are working to mitigate the problem in order to resume all operations.

The main concern of crypto exchange operators in Asia is that during the blackout, market data become very unpredictable and users could purchase Bitcoins very cheap with pre-placed limit orders. Dovey Wan, a founding partner of Primitive Ventures, signaled about the unusual behavior on Twitter, attaching a screenshot from crypto exchange BitMax. Data suggests that BitMax users could buy around 45 Bitcoin for under a $1 worth of USDT. Bitcoin’s retail price at the time was $10,190.

Amazon’s AWS cloud status page confirms the connectivity issues at their Asia Pacific Northeast servers, located in Tokyo. According to a press release from Amazon, the leading cause of the malfunction has been detected, and cloud engineers are already working on repairing the damage.

According to the status page, some Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes are showing degraded performance. At 11:40 PM PDT, Amazon stated that they see recovery, and the team will continue working until recover all affected EBS volumes.