Amazon’s cloud computing division experienced an outage at one of its northern Virginia data centre zones on Thursday, disrupting services for several major platforms, including cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and derivatives marketplace CME Group.
While it was not immediately clear whether the issues affecting AWS and CME were directly connected, Coinbase confirmed that problems on its exchange were caused by the AWS disruption.
AWS cites cooling issue behind outage
Amazon Web Services said the disruption was caused by increased temperatures within a single data centre facility.
The company stated that it had begun seeing “early signs of recovery” after bringing additional cooling system capacity online.
AWS said it had shifted traffic away from the affected Availability Zone for most services as part of ongoing recovery efforts.
An Availability Zone refers to one or more connected physical data centres designed to operate independently within an AWS Region.
In a later update, AWS said efforts to add more cooling capacity were taking longer than expected.
The company added that it still did not have a timeline for full recovery.
AWS and CME did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours.
Coinbase restores trading after disruptions
Coinbase said all markets on its exchange had been re-enabled for trading after the platform experienced performance issues linked to the AWS outage.
The company confirmed that the disruption affected exchange operations before services were restored later in the day.
The outage highlighted the dependence of cryptocurrency platforms on large cloud infrastructure providers such as AWS.
CME reports technical and latency issues
CME Group, the world’s largest derivatives marketplace, also reported issues affecting its CME Direct trading platform.
In an update posted on its website, CME said it had completed essential maintenance work and that users were once again able to log in to the platform.
The company did not specify the cause of the technical and latency problems affecting its services.
The disruption raised concerns among market participants, especially given CME’s critical role in global futures and derivatives trading.
Previous outages raised concerns over infrastructure risks
The latest incident follows a major AWS outage last October that disrupted thousands of websites and applications globally, including popular platforms such as Snapchat and Reddit.
That disruption was considered the largest internet outage since the 2024 CrowdStrike malfunction, which affected technology systems across hospitals, banks and airports worldwide.
The incident highlighted growing concerns about the vulnerability of interconnected digital infrastructure and the risks posed by failures within critical cloud computing systems.
Trading across stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies was halted for several hours.
At the time, CME blamed the outage on a cooling failure at data centres operated by CyrusOne.
The company had said its Chicago-area facility affected services for customers including CME.
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