Gemini Outage: Crypto Exchange Recovers After Major Disruption Affecting Trading Services, Withdrawals

Gemini, the crypto exchange founded by the Winklevoss twins back in 2014, experienced a temporary outage on late Wednesday caused by what the firm claims to be due to an Amazon Web Services EBS outage. According to Gemini's status page, most of the company's services were down, including “fiat deposits and withdrawals.” Both Gemini Earn — the exchanges' crypto lending programme and the Gemini mobile app were also experiencing “major outages.” Gemini reassured users that customer funds were safe and later confirmed on Twitter that the service was back up and running and that users could make withdrawals at any time.

“Gemini is investigating reports of potential service disruptions. All customer accounts and funds remain completely secure. Further updates to follow,” Gemini wrote in a status update at 10:03 pm IST on Wednesday. At 10:10 pm IST, Genesis said: “We are continuing to investigate this issue.”

Several hours earlier, Gemini announced that its Earn unit will be unable to meet customer redemptions in the service-level agreement's time frame of five days following the disclosure by Genesis Global Capital that it halted withdrawals and new loan originations.

“We will continue to work with them on behalf of all Earn customers. This is our highest priority. We greatly appreciate your patience,” Gemini said. With numerous users taking to Twitter to voice their concerns, Gemini blamed the outage on Amazon Web Services before restoring services by approximately 11:05pm IST.

As things stand, the exchange has confirmed that they are still investigating the issue and that they will provide more updates as they become available.

As a result of the halting incident, Twitter users have expressed fears, citing the current market condition, claiming “Nothing is safe at the moment.”

The Gemini outage and Genesis withdrawal freeze follow the collapse of FTX last week, previously one of the biggest exchanges in the world. The FTX crypto exchange, founded by former billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, filed for bankruptcy late last week after inexplicably losing billions of dollars of investors' money.