Gemini Recovers From Services Outage Following Genesis Withdrawal Freeze

Gemini – the crypto exchange founded by the Winklevoss twins in 2014 – experienced sweeping service disruptions shortly after Genesis froze customer withdrawals on Wednesday. 

The firm later clarified that an Amazon Web Services EBS outage was responsible for the disruptions, and restored functionality shortly afterward.

• According to Gemini’s status page, most of the company’s services were down, including “fiat deposits and withdrawals.” Both Gemini Earn and the Gemini mobile app were also experiencing “major outages.” 
• Some users’ attempts to access Gemini’s exchange page were met with a notice about being “temporarily grounded.” 
• At the time of writing, however, the page appears accessible, and most other services are back online. Only wire transfer deposits/withdrawals are still experiencing “degraded performance”, while Gemini Earn remains down. 

• “Gemini Earn Deposits are currently unavailable.” said the company on Wednesday. “There are expected delays for in-progress Redemptions. Further updates to follow.” 

• Gemini Earn is a yield product that offers up to 8% APY to users who lend out their crypto, depending on the coin being provided. 
• However, Gemini Earn’s lending partner Genesis froze withdrawals due to liquidity issues on Wednesday, forcing the product to temporarily suspend customer redemptions.  

• “This does not impact any other Gemini products and services,” said Gemini. “All customer funds held on the Gemini exchange are held 1:1 and available for withdrawal at any time.” 

• The collapse of FTX last week has left numerous other exchanges and crypto lenders facing liquidity crises, including BlockFi and Liquid Global.