Bitcoin Frenzy Buckles Exchanges as Price Surges Past $16,000

Bitcoin surged past $16,000 for the first time on Thursday, with frenzied demand to trade the cryptocurrency buckling one of the largest exchanges just days before the first U.S. futures contracts begin trading, according to Bloomberg.

Bitcoin’s rally of more than $3,000 in only 24 hours continued to defy its legions of skeptics, as mainstream demand for the world’s largest cryptocurrency explodes. Investors flocking to open new accounts or place orders left Coinbase, the largest U.S. exchange, warning of outages and slow transactions.

Trezor, a wallet service, tweeted that it’s having “minor issues“ with its servers, while Bitfinex, the largest bitcoin exchange in the world, said on Twitter that it has been under a denial of service attack for several days and that it recently got worse.

Daily price swings of that magnitude and weakness at the exchanges underscored concerns raised Wednesday by some of the world’s biggest brokerages, which told regulators the contracts have been rushed to market without enough due diligence. The new bitcoin derivatives products are slated to begin trading this month and are expected to boost mainstream demand.

The slowdown on exchanges also highlighted the disparate pricing that can occur. The surging demand on Coinbase sent prices as high as $19,697, higher by more than $3,000 than other exchanges. Coinbase added at least 300,000 users since just before the Thanksgiving holiday. The company had 13.3 million users as of Nov. 26, up from 13 million on Nov. 22 and 10.6 million two months ago.