Several exchanges, including Binance, Bitfinex and Bittrex, have closed registrations for new users.
With the surging price of cryptocurrencies, demand has reached the point where cryptocurrency exchanges are completely swamped. This massive influx of users has led to major infrastructure concerns leading to the temporary closure of their registration portals.
Throughout the last half of 2017, digital currency exchanges have posted record numbers of user signup. Binance is reporting the addition of 250,000 users per day while Coinbase has reported numerous days of 100,000+ user signups and Kraken boasts of 50,000 new users per day.
Halt
The incredible swelling of cryptocurrency users is overwhelming the infrastructure of many cryptocurrency exchanges, with some such as Kraken experiencing major usability problems throughout 2017. The exchange has responded by disabling some of its advanced order types, reducing price precision and initiating a major system overhaul.
Bittrex is one of the first exchange platforms that put a halt on onboarding new users. Back in December 2017, an alert from this US-based exchange reads:
“We have received an enormous number of new account registrations over the past few weeks.”
In addition to Bittrex, two other platforms had to make a similar decision – Bitfinex and Binance. New signups to Bitfinex will be welcomed by a window stating that new account creation has been paused.
Part of the message reads:
“Thank you for your interest in opening a Bitfinex account. However, due to extraordinary demand, new account creation has been temporarily paused.
Bitfinex focuses on serving professional traders. The reason we have decided to temporarily stop accepting new accounts is that we cannot undermine the quality of our services for our existing traders by flooding the system with new, small accounts.”
Binance has also had to halt registrations while undergoing an infrastructure update. While Bittrex and Binance have not given a timeline for reopening new account registrations, Bitfinex intends to allow signups starting January 15, 2018.
