Cryptocurrency exchanges go offline due to a major Cloudflare outage

On December 5, 2025, millions of users worldwide experienced sudden internet outages. The cause was a major internal outage at Cloudflare, which acknowledged an "internal service degradation." This immediately impacted a huge number of websites and applications, including popular crypto exchanges.

What happened?

Many well-known platforms, such as X, LinkedIn, and Discord, were affected. Users were unable to access Canva and Notion, while ChatGPT and Perplexity were unable to respond. Even services like Spotify and Letterboxd began to experience outages.

To make matters worse, Downdetector, the service designed to detect such outages, also crashed. Users were left without a convenient tool to help them understand what was happening, adding to the tension.

Crypto Exchanges Down Alongside the Rest

Problems quickly spread to the crypto market. Users began reporting issues loading crypto exchanges like Coinbase and Upbit. The Kraken trading platform also experienced outages. Basic pages wouldn't open, APIs weren't working, and some users lost access to their accounts.

This came as an unpleasant surprise to traders: trades became impossible, data wasn't updated, and the market could fluctuate wildly. In a volatile environment, such outages can lead to significant financial losses.

Difficulties Affected DeFi, Too

The outage also impacted decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. While smart contracts continued to function, the interfaces of many DeFi services simply failed to load. Dashboards, exchanges, and liquidity aggregators—everything that relied on Cloudflare—were rendered inaccessible.

Technically, the blockchain continued to function, but users without interfaces were forced to observe the situation from the sidelines, unable to interact with the protocols.

Cloudflare has restored service

By the time of publication, the Cloudflare team reported that a fix had already been deployed. The company switched to active monitoring to ensure the situation stabilized. Service restoration occurred gradually, and users began to return to their normal activities.

In conclusion

The Cloudflare outage was a serious test for many users and companies, including crypto exchanges and DeFi protocols. This incident highlights the importance of reliable infrastructure that underpins the modern internet and demonstrates how quickly problems can arise when relying on cloud services. Investors and traders should be prepared for such situations, given their potential impact on the market.