Coinbase: don’t expect to trade your cryptocurrency at busy times

Brian Armstrong, CEO of digital currency exchange Coinbase, says he “couldn’t be more excited about the explosion of interest in digital currencies.”

But the explosion comes at a potential price, he commented in a 7 December blog post. All the excitement, largely driven by the rocketing price of Bitcoin and its brethren, was creating, “extreme volatility and stress on our systems,” he said.

No kidding. On the day of Armstrong’s post, that is exactly what happened. TechCrunch reported that Coinbase, “had a rough day… as the exchange buckled under the pressure of a particularly hefty day of trading.”