The AWS Outage and the Centralized Infrastructure Dependence of Crypto

The recent AWS outage on Oct. 20, 2025, severely disrupted major crypto exchanges such as Coinbase and Robinhood, raising concerns about the industry's reliance on centralized cloud platforms. The outage, caused by a malfunction in Amazon's domain name service, resulted in widespread accessibility issues for numerous online services for two hours. Such outages highlight the vulnerabilities of centralized infrastructure in the crypto space, where trading millions of dollars occurs every hour. The incident serves as a reminder of the pressing need for crypto exchanges to adopt decentralized systems to eliminate single points of failure. While AWS managed to restore services promptly, the potential impact of outages on traders is significant, leading to frozen transactions and financial losses. The article argues that crypto exchanges should transition towards more resilient decentralized infrastructures to mitigate these risks and enhance reliability.

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