Major exchanges struggle as Bitcoin pumps on $1.5B Tesla investment

Service outages have been reported at major cryptocurrency exchanges on Feb. 8, following the news that Tesla invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin (BTC).

As Cointelegraph reported earlier, news of Tesla’s sizeable investment broke after the discovery of a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This caused Bitcoin price to jump $3,000 in a matter of minutes, eventually claiming a newall-time high of $44,850.

Problems were reported at a number of exchanges, including Binance, whose CEO CZ tweeted that a traffic influx was causing temporary delays while auto-scaling caught up, and that Tesla CEO Elon Musk was to blame.

Massive incoming traffic. Some lags observed in some regions. Auto scaling. Should catch up soon. All because of Elon.

— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) February 8, 2021

Many Kraken users took to Twitter to complain that the site was also down, although there was no official confirmation of this from the exchange itself.

What a surprise! Theres a spike in volume and @krakenfx is down! Thank god I barely use you anymore, for new comes to crypto world, avoid them at all costs!

— Crypto Carl (@CryptoCarl_) February 8, 2021

The reported outages are just the latest in a seemingly never-ending cycle of issues to occur at major exchanges when traffic volume spikes, causing some in the crypto community to cry “foul play”.

Despite assurances from the exchanges that past issues have been addressed, platforms continue to crash on a regular basis during high-traffic periods such as price pumps; the time when most investors want their service to be at its most stable.

Aside from news of Tesla’s $1.5 billion Bitcoin investment, the report filed with the SEC also suggested that Tesla would start to accept Bitcoin as payment for its cars. As the company can now hold reserves in Bitcoin, it would not need to immediately liquidate tokens acquired in this manner.