Coinbase disruption tied to AWS outage draws criticism amid staff layoffs and Q1 losses

Coinbase experienced a significant multi-hour disruption to its crypto trading services, which it attributed to an outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS). The incident affected both web and mobile platforms, with users unable to transact due to failures impacting multiple AWS availability zones in the U.S. Eastern Region. Coinbase stated that the issue was resolved after markets were briefly placed in a "cancel only" mode and that a full investigation would be conducted, pending AWS's official retrospective. The outage drew criticism, particularly from software engineer Gergely Orosz, who highlighted the negative optics for Coinbase, especially given recent statements by its CEO about non-technical teams shipping code. This incident adds to Coinbase's challenges, including declining trading activity, recent staff layoffs (14% of its workforce), and weaker-than-expected Q1 2026 financial results, which showed a loss per share and lower revenue than anticipated.

(Source：CoinDesk)