Exchange Outages: What Happens to Orders and Balances

Exchange outages cluster around periods of extreme volatility, because that is when load peaks. The consequence is that the platform is least available exactly when access matters most.

What causes them

Load. Order volume exceeding matching engine capacity.

Deliberate suspension. Trading halted because the venue judges conditions unsafe, or because of an issue with a specific asset or network.

Infrastructure failure. Cloud provider problems, database issues, network partitions.

Network-level suspension. Deposits and withdrawals for a specific asset paused because of congestion or an upgrade on that chain, while trading continues.

The last category is the most common and the least reported, because trading remains available and most users do not notice.

What happens to open orders

This varies by venue and by cause, which is the point worth knowing in advance.

In a partial outage, the matching engine may continue executing orders while the interface is unavailable. Users cannot see or cancel positions that are still active. In a full halt, orders typically remain queued and execute when trading resumes, at whatever prices then prevail.

Neither behaviour is wrong. Both are surprising if you have not read the venue’s policy, and the policy is published.

What happens to balances

Balances are unaffected. An outage is an availability problem, not a solvency one, and conflating the two causes unnecessary panic.

The distinction that matters is between a platform that is down and a platform that is processing some operations and not others. A venue that continues trading while withdrawals remain suspended for an extended period is displaying the warning sign described elsewhere on this site, and the duration is what separates a technical issue from a solvency one.

What a user can actually do

Nothing, during the outage. Repeatedly refreshing does not help and adds load.

Know the policy in advance. Read how your venue handles orders during a halt. Ten minutes, once.

Do not hold leveraged positions you cannot manage. An outage during a sharp move can mean a liquidation you had no opportunity to prevent.

Keep access to a second venue. Not for trading, but so that you are not entirely without options during a suspension.

Do not respond to messages during an outage. Fraudulent support accounts surge during outages, offering to help with balances or withdrawals. Every one of them is a scam.

The transparency test

How a venue communicates during an outage is informative about how it operates generally.

The good behaviour: a status page updated in real time, a clear statement of what is and is not working, and an explanation afterwards. The bad behaviour: silence, or messaging that describes a suspension as routine maintenance.

Venues that publish a status page and a documented policy for halts, such as Collect & Exchange, make it possible to know in advance what will happen. That is worth checking before you need it rather than during the hour when you do.