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Ask HN: Why is every cryptocurrency exchange down so much lately?

4 points by rburhum ↗ HN
I have been noticing that many exchanges are down lately. I have heard a lot of conspiracy theories - anywhere from people testing pump and dump techniques to targeted DDoS attacks to enable only certain people to trade between exchanges. I have been trying to put a single sell order in Kraken, but I noticed that coinbase, gdax, bitfinex, etc were also down at the same time. What gives?

2 comments

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Cyberdog
Volatility causes news. News causes rises and falls, which cause news and volatility. Rises cause sell orders; falls cause buy orders (and sell orders). News also causes people to think "I should finally get in on this bitcoin thing" which causes buy orders. Buy and sell orders cause activity and traffic on the exchange sites.

All that being said, DDOSing and pump-and-dumps may be happening too.

rburhum
I get that traffic may be increasing because of demand, but I find it bizarre (and unlikely) that so many exchanges would not have planned for it.