AWS Outage Disrupts Coinbase and Robinhood Services

The issue began at 3:11 AM Eastern Time in the US-EAST-1 region and was largely resolved within approximately three hours, though some services took longer to fully recover.

What Happened

AWS reported problems in its US-EAST-1 data center located in Northern Virginia. The issue stemmed from a DNS resolution failure affecting DynamoDB, a core database service that many other AWS applications depend on. DNS acts like the internet’s phone book, translating website names into IP addresses that computers can understand. When this system broke, apps couldn’t connect to the databases they needed to function.

The US-EAST-1 region handles roughly 35-40% of all AWS traffic globally, making it one of the company’s most critical infrastructure hubs. When problems hit this region, the effects spread quickly across the internet.

By 6:00 AM, AWS engineers had identified the root cause and began recovering services. The company stated that most services returned to normal operations by 6:35 AM Eastern Time.

Impact on Crypto Platforms

Coinbase’s mobile app crashed completely during the outage. Users couldn’t log in, place trades, or withdraw funds for several hours. The exchange’s support team posted on X (formerly Twitter) that “many users are currently unable to access Coinbase due to an AWS outage” and assured customers that “all funds are safe.”

Thousands of people reported problems on Downdetector, a website that tracks service disruptions. Some users who managed to access their accounts found that charts weren’t displaying correctly and withdrawal functions weren’t working.

Robinhood faced similar issues. The trading platform, which makes a large portion of its revenue from crypto trading, confirmed on social media that “services are impacted due to issues at AWS, one of our third party vendors.”

A Coinbase spokesperson later told Fortune that “Coinbase services have recovered. Some older asset transfer requests are still pending, which we are investigating.”

This wasn’t the first time AWS problems hit crypto exchanges. In April 2025, another AWS malfunction briefly disrupted Binance and Kucoin, with Binance temporarily pausing customer withdrawals.

Widespread Disruption Across Industries

The outage reached far beyond cryptocurrency. Gaming platforms like Fortnite, Roblox, and Pokémon Go went offline. Social media and messaging apps including Snapchat, Signal, and Reddit stopped working. Even Amazon’s own services like Ring doorbells and Alexa smart speakers failed to function.

Source: health.aws.amazon.com

Payment apps Venmo and Chime experienced problems, preventing users from making transactions. Business tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams had connectivity issues. Streaming services including HBO Max and Prime Video went dark.

In the United Kingdom, government websites including Gov.uk and HM Revenue and Customs reported problems. Lloyds Banking Group confirmed some of its services were affected but said they came back online within 20 minutes.

More than 70 internal AWS services were impacted, according to the company. The disruption also affected Amazon’s internal systems, with warehouse workers and delivery drivers reporting that they couldn’t access essential tools during their shifts.

The Cost of Downtime

Mehdi Daoudi, CEO of internet monitoring firm Catchpoint, estimated the financial impact could reach hundreds of billions of dollars. This includes lost productivity for millions of workers who rely on AWS-powered tools to do their jobs.

For gaming platforms that generate millions in daily revenue through in-game purchases, even a few hours of downtime means significant losses. Financial platforms like Coinbase and Robinhood facilitate billions in transactions, and any disruption can lead to missed trading opportunities.

Interestingly, despite the outage, stock prices for Amazon, Coinbase, and Robinhood all rose Monday morning. Amazon’s shares increased 1%, Coinbase jumped almost 5%, and Robinhood gained more than 6%.

Questions About Centralization

The outage highlighted an uncomfortable truth for the crypto industry: despite aiming to create decentralized systems, major exchanges still depend heavily on centralized cloud providers.

Cryptocurrency was designed to operate without relying on any single company or authority. Bitcoin, the first blockchain, was created by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto with this principle in mind. Yet Monday’s disruption showed that most crypto trading platforms run on infrastructure controlled by a handful of tech giants.

AWS provides cloud services to some of the biggest crypto exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, Crypto.com, and Kraken. These exchanges choose AWS because it can handle high transaction volumes with low delay times.

Some blockchain projects have tried to create decentralized alternatives to AWS, but these haven’t gained widespread adoption yet. The concentration of internet infrastructure among just three or four major providers (Amazon, Microsoft, and Google) means that problems at any one of them can cause massive disruptions.

Patrick Burgess, a cybersecurity expert at BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, noted that “when there’s an issue like this, it can be really impactful across a broad range” of online services.

Learning from Past Failures

AWS has experienced similar outages before. A 2023 disruption knocked many websites offline for several hours. The longest recent outage occurred in late 2021, affecting companies for more than five hours. Additional outages happened in 2020 and 2017.

Mike Chapple, an IT professor at the University of Notre Dame, explained that recovery from these events takes time. As engineers apply fixes across the cloud infrastructure, the process can trigger smaller disruptions, similar to what happens when restoring power after a major electrical grid failure.

Security experts confirmed that Monday’s outage resulted from a technical glitch, not a cyberattack. The problem appeared to be a misconfiguration in the DNS system rather than malicious activity.

For crypto platforms, these recurring outages raise serious questions about infrastructure resilience. As digital asset adoption grows, exchanges need robust backup systems to maintain service during cloud provider failures.

The Wake-Up Call

Monday’s disruption serves as a reminder that the digital world isn’t as stable as it appears. Modern life depends on a surprisingly fragile network of interconnected services, all resting on infrastructure controlled by a small number of companies.

For crypto users, the message is clear: even platforms designed for decentralization still rely on centralized systems. Until the industry develops truly independent infrastructure, these vulnerabilities will continue to exist.