Update: Coinbase up with intermittent suspensions after stopping transactions for crypto

Coinbase, the most popular site for cryptocurrency transactions in the U.S., is back up after a temporary suspension of trading activity today amid a crash in cryptocurrency prices.

The company now is informing customers that buys and sells will be “intermittently” offline during the day.

A statement on the company’s website this morning read, “Due to today’s high traffic, buys and sells may be temporarily offline. We’re working on restoring full availability as soon as possible.”

That follows an earlier statement from the company that all buys and sells were temporarily disabled.

A spokesperson fro the company referred me to the company’s website for status updates, saying there was no additional information to share.

It’s been a tumultuous few weeks for the marquee crypto-currency wallet and transaction company as a late-year surge in transactions have repeatedly felled Coinbase’s services.

The latest suspension follows a crash in cryptocurrency pricing that we first reported yesterday. That drop — which at one point erased more than $4,000 from the value of bitcoin — was the biggest loss of value (on a percentage basis) that bitcoin had seen this year.

Since January, the price of the most recognizable cryptocurrency in the world has risen from $998 to nearly $20,000 earlier this week.

There’s been no explanation for the sudden and precipitous drop in bitcoin’s value, but it isn’t the only blockchain-based currency to see prices drop.

Bitcoin isn’t the only crypto plunging, all but two of the most valuable 100 coins are down in value over the last 24 hours https://t.co/FfWgyk8F2u pic.twitter.com/ZnnmoUG3xP — Jon Russell (@jonrussell) December 22, 2017

This is a breaking story and we will update it as more information becomes available.