Some of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges were experiencing technical issues Monday after Tesla’s (TSLA) announcement of a $1.5 billion bitcoin investment saw prices rally to new highs over $44,000.
- According to status pages and tweets for Binance, Varfabit.com and Kraken the platforms have experienced difficulties on web and mobile following a surge in bandwidth demand from traders.
- Binance disabled withdrawals for a short period, but at press time the exchange said these are once more functional.
- The issues come amid a spike in market activity after Tesla said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it has invested $1.5 billion in bitcoin and “may acquire and hold digital assets from time to time or long term.”
As the news quickly spread, bitcoin prices rose around 15% to a new all-time high of $44,801.87, per CoinDesk 20 data. At press time, the cryptocurrency was trading around $43,640.
