Top Crypto Exchanges Experience Difficulties as Tesla News Prompts Trading Frenzy

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, Gemini 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.

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CORRECTION (Feb. 8, 18:00 UTC): Corrects to remove Coinbase from list of affected exchanges. Coinbase reported no new issues today.

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