FTX Crisis: What Went Wrong At Gemini Exchange Today?

Users of crypto exchange Gemini temporarily lost access to their crypto assets on Wednesday. The incident took place soon after the firm announced it was temporarily stopping its Earn product, but it appears that a separate server issue was to blame. Customers were likewise forewarned by Gemini earlier today that withdrawals from its Earn product would experience delays as well.

Gemini Faces Outage Across Platforms

Right after the announcement was made, users across the globe pointed out that they were logged out of their accounts, and some couldn’t access the different parts of the app.  The exchange’s official status page showed widespread outages as of 11:55 am ET.

Call it strange timing or pure coincidence, but the outage happened right after Gemini’s tweet about disabling their Earn feature. Investors across the board panicked about Gemini winding up operations due to having exposure to both Genesis and FTX.

Read More: Genesis Suspends Customer Withdrawals In Wake Of FTX Collapse

However, Gemini later tweeted that, it was merely an “Amazon Web Services EBS outage”. Gemini reassured users that their funds were secure and that they could also make withdrawals as all services were back up and running. As of 12:35 pm ET, most services had been restored.

Gemini exchange fully back online; all customer funds held on the Gemini exchange are held 1:1 and available for withdrawal at any time.

— Gemini (@Gemini) November 16, 2022

Even though most of the outage has been fixed, Gemini Earn still remains closed for customers as of now. Earlier today, Genesis blamed “unprecedented market turmoil” for its issues.

Genesis Falters After FTX Collapse

After prime broker Genesis stopped new loan originations and customer redemptions within its lending business, Gemini Earn put a halt to withdrawals. Gemini Earn is the yield-earning product offered by the exchange for users to earn rewards on over 40 cryptocurrencies.

Gemini released a statement when it paused Gemini Earn, which stated,

“We are aware that Genesis Global Capital, LLC (Genesis) — the lending partner of the Earn program — has paused withdrawals and will not be able to meet customer redemptions within the service-level agreement (SLA) of 5 business days.”