Crypto Traders Hit by Chat App Outage: Upbit Investors Fume as They Are Frozen Out
Thousands of South Korea crypto traders say they have been left out of pocket due to a near-blackout of services operated by the chat app giant Kakao – which operates login functions for users of Upbit, the nation’s biggest crypto exchange.
Kakao was hit with massive outages on Saturday afternoon (KST), following the outbreak of a fire at Kakao’s server center – which is operated by SK C&C. The fire blazed for some hours in the center, in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province. Partial functionality was restored some 10 hours after the blaze was first reported, but at the time of writing, a number of the app’s functions are still not operational.
The blaze appears to have hit at least half of the 32,000 servers stored in the building, with the firm’s Vice President Yang Hyun-seo quoted as stating that the company had experienced a “simultaneous shutdown” of its servers in an even that “rarely occurs in the IT industry.”
For crypto traders, the fallout was felt immediately. Upbit uses a Kakao-powered KakaoTalk login system and its customer service staff communicate with customers via Kakao.
On social media, news outlets shared images of firefighters tackling the blaze.
While iPhone and Apple PC owners can use their Apple IDs to login to Upbit, Android users can only use KakaoTalk to login to their wallets, Yonhap reported.
Upbit is unique in using Kakao logins – other South Korean exchanges use their own login solutions. And Upbit stated, per Yonhap, that it had been planning to roll out its own independent login solution to run parallel to its Apple and Kakao login system “from October 31.”
The media outlet quoted unnamed Upbit customers as claiming they had been unable to make key trades, and had suffered losses or missed out on gains as
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