It’s been a chaotic start to the week for the global internet and crypto wasn’t spared. Within a few hours, China accused the U.S. of launching a major cyberattack, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) – the world’s biggest cloud provider – suffered a massive outage that took down hundreds of popular apps, including Coinbase, Venmo, and Robinhood.

The timing of the two events has sparked plenty of online chatter. While there’s no confirmed link, the back-to-back disruptions have once again exposed how dependent even the crypto industry is on centralized web infrastructure.

China Points Fingers at the U.S.

On Sunday, China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) claimed it had “obtained irrefutable evidence” that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) hacked into its National Time Service Center, a key government facility that keeps Beijing Time synced across the country’s finance, defense, and transport sectors.

According to the MSS, the U.S. began the covert operation in March 2022, using 42 different cyber tools to infiltrate systems and steal state data. The agency accused Washington of “aggressively pursuing cyber-hegemony” and “trampling on international norms.”

China said the attack could have disrupted power, communication, and financial operations.

AWS Outage Brings Down Half the Internet

Barely a day later, early Monday morning, Amazon Web Services experienced a large-scale outage centered in its North Virginia (US-EAST-1) region. The issue affected core services like DynamoDB and EC2, which thousands of companies rely on for computing and data storage.

As a result, apps and websites across industries went offline – from Snapchat and Roblox to Venmo, Robinhood, and Coinbase. Even Amazon’s own services like Alexa, Ring, and Prime Video were hit.

AWS confirmed “increased error rates” and said engineers were working to restore services. By late morning, some platforms began showing signs of recovery.

Coinbase Confirms All Funds Are Safe

Crypto exchange Coinbase, which runs on AWS, was among the hardest hit. Users faced login issues and transaction delays before the company confirmed that “all funds are safe.” Coinbase later said systems were stabilizing and services were coming back online.

The brief outage reminded traders just how connected the crypto ecosystem still is to centralized systems.

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A Wake-Up Call for the Digital World?

Two back-to-back incidents – a cyberattack accusation and a major cloud failure – have proved one thing: the internet, and by extension crypto, isn’t as resilient as we’d like to believe.

For now, AWS is recovering, Coinbase is back online, and both governments are silent. 

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