Poloniex exchange goes down on the brink of new Bitcoin all-time high

When all eyes are on Bitcoin, exchanges sometimes suffer difficulties.

With a new all-time price high in sight for Bitcoin, crypto exchange Poloniex recently went offline.

“Poloniex is currently unavailable due to an unexpected issue,” the exchange’s customer support Twitter page said on Friday. “We are investigating the issue and will keep you updated here throughout.”

Bitcoin has yielded exuberant upward price action in recent weeks, as well as catching growing attention. When traffic becomes dense on exchanges, their systems sometimes go down, locking out traders. This has happened with other exchanges in the past as well, including BitMEX and Coinbase.

“Poloniex is now out of maintenance mode,” Poloniex posted in a follow-up tweet. “Our spot and margin markets are in post-only mode and withdrawals are temporarily unavailable.” A subsequent update stated the return of futures contract trading on the platform.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin remains painfully close to its all-time price high near $20,000. This year has seen a significant amount of mainstream financial attention on the asset. Paul Tudor Jones, Jack Dorsey’s Square and MicroStrategy have all jumped on board, buying big positions in the digital coin.

Cointelegraph reached out to Poloniex for additional details, but received no response as of press time. This article will be updated accordingly should a response come in. 

UPDATE Nov. 20, 22:03 UTC: This article has been updated, reflecting Cointelegraph’s request for comment.