AWS said the problem started after temperatures rose inside a single data centre, blaming a cooling system failure while explaining that engineers brought extra cooling capacity online as recovery work continued.

The outage affected services in one Availability Zone, which is a group of connected data centres designed to operate separately within an AWS region. AWS said it redirected traffic away from the affected zone for most services to reduce disruption.

Later in the day, recovery was taking longer than expected because more cooling capacity was still needed before remaining systems could safely return online. AWS further added that it did not yet have a timeline for full recovery.

Coinbase confirmed its trading platform issues were directly linked to the AWS outage. Users reported problems accessing services and delays during trading, although the company later said all markets had been restored and trading resumed normally.

Meanwhile, CME Group reported login and latency problems on its CME Direct trading platform. In a notice to users, the exchange said it had completed “essential maintenance work” and confirmed customers could log back in. The company did not explain the cause of the disruption.

Neither AWS nor CME immediately responded to requests for additional comment outside normal business hours.

The incident again exposed how heavily large financial platforms depend on cloud providers such as AWS. Even a problem in a single data centre zone can spread quickly across trading services, apps and online platforms used worldwide.

AWS has faced similar problems before. In October last year, a major outage disrupted thousands of websites and apps, including Snapchat and Reddit. That disruption became one of the largest internet outages in recent years.

A month later, CME Group experienced another major interruption after cooling systems failed at a data centre operated by CyrusOne in the Chicago area. Trading across stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies stopped for several hours.

The latest outage also points to stress on data centres as companies expand artificial intelligence systems and use more high-density servers, which generate far more heat and demand stronger cooling systems.

AWS has advised customers to spread workloads across multiple Availability Zones and regions to reduce the risk of large-scale disruptions when outages happen.

This is being achieved through Flutterwave’s collaboration with Nuvion and Turnkey to provide a secure, flexible, and verifiable stablecoin balance infrastructure.

It is a major step in Flutterwave’s vision to make stablecoins a key pillar of Africa’s financial ecosystem, forming a core backbone for the next wave of financial transformation and global connectivity.

“To accelerate business growth in Africa, we must make it safe, easy, and affordable for businesses to accept all forms of regulated payment methods, including stablecoin, from a global customer base,” said Nkem Abuah, Lead, GEPP ROW, Remittances & Stablecoin Partnerships, Flutterwave.

“By enabling stablecoin balances powered by Turnkey, we are ensuring that multinationals, African enterprises, and individuals using Flutterwave will have access to low-cost, faster, and always-on cross-border payments with stablecoins,” Nkem added.

Providing embedded wallets for merchants

Through this integration, Flutterwave provides a comprehensive embedded wallet experience that facilitates seamless transactions using stablecoin payments.

This is supported by Turnkey, a blockchain infrastructure provider, along with Nuvion’s AI-powered global banking and payment platform, which is built on both fiat and stablecoin infrastructure.

The initial phase will enable a select group of merchants to transact in USDC and USDT, as well as USD and NGN.

This prepares the stage for a broader expansion later this year, where access will scale to all approved Flutterwave merchants.

“Flutterwave has shown the transformative potential of stablecoins in helping people start and grow businesses globally,” said Bryce Ferguson, CEO and co-founder of Turnkey. “We share Flutterwave’s belief that stablecoins offer an incredibly efficient way to accelerate payments and put more money directly into the hands of business owners rather than intermediaries. Through Turnkey’s embedded wallet infrastructure, we’re proud to power Flutterwave’s stablecoin payments and support their mission to empower the next generation of African innovators.”

Powering the next generation of secure, verifiable infrastructure

Flutterwave joins a growing number of leading payments, DeFi, and trading companies, including Polymarket, Axiom, Alchemy, World, Moonshot, and more, using Turnkey’s verifiable blockchain infrastructure for embedded wallets, transaction automation, and provable security.

Over the last year, Turnkey was named one of the 2025 CNBC World’s Top Fintech Companies and has introduced a range of new product capabilities. Most notably, the team recently launched Turnkey Verifiable Cloud in private beta, bringing provable security to the most sensitive workloads. This follows the introduction of the world’s first verifiable wallets, the addition of fiat onramp support via MoonPay and Coinbase, and the open-sourcing of QuorumOS, the operating system for Turnkey’s end-to-end verifiable computing environment.

With this partnership, Flutterwave reinforces its commitment to building Africa’s largest, most secure infrastructure for next-generation digital payments, enabling businesses and consumers to transact stablecoins seamlessly, streamline cross-border payments, and unlock new financial opportunities across the continent.

The outage, which originated from AWS’s US-EAST-1 region, began in the early hours of Monday and quickly spread beyond the United States, affecting Europe, Asia, and Africa. 

According to AWS’s own status dashboard, multiple services are currently “impacted” due to “increased error rates and latencies,” with engineers “actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause.”

For users, the impact has been immediate and widespread. Alexa devices have gone silent, unable to respond to voice commands or execute daily routines like alarms and reminders. 

Developers and businesses using AWS’s cloud network, from Airtable to Perplexity AI and the McDonald’s app, have also been hit. Even high-traffic entertainment platforms like Fortnite, Roblox, and Rainbow Six Siege are offline.

Downdetector, a platform that tracks service disruptions, has logged over 2,000 incident reports in the U.S. alone since the outage began. On Reddit and X (formerly Twitter), frustrated users across time zones have shared screenshots of failed connections and frozen dashboards.

“Perplexity is down right now,” confirmed Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, in a post on X. “The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it.”

Amazon, in its latest public update at 3:51 a.m. ET, noted that it would provide further information every 45 minutes “or sooner if we have additional information to share.” However, at the time of writing, there is still no estimated timeline for full restoration.

This isn’t the first time AWS’s US-EAST-1 region has been the source of widespread disruption. Similar outages in December 2021, November 2020, and June 2023 took down high-profile platforms including Netflix, Disney+, Slack, Zoom, and Twitch. 

Each incident revealed an issue across the tech industry, that a large portion of the global internet depends heavily on a single cloud provider’s regional infrastructure.

The current outage appears to have hit both consumer-facing apps and backend systems, including AWS’s own Support Center and Support API, which organisations rely on for case creation and troubleshooting.

While AWS has reiterated that engineers are investigating the problem, the lack of transparency about the specific cause of the outage is driving industry-wide anxiety. Many are now revisiting familiar cases of how much centralisation is too much when the internet’s backbone depends on just a handful of companies.

For now, millions of users are in a holding pattern, waiting, refreshing, and hoping their devices come back online soon.

• Argentina is the world’s most crypto-friendly country 
• America ranks second for crypto adoption 
• The United Arab Emirates, with the most crypto holders, ranks third 

Cryptocurrencies have been rising in popularity in recent years, with crypto ownership growing from 432 million to 580 million in 2023 alone, according to Crypto.com.

10 African Countries That Banned Cryptocurrency

While many countries have tried to regulate and suppress the technological advances, others have accepted and supported the growth of these new industries.

Argentina topped the list as the world’s most crypto-friendly country, with a large percentage of the population holding crypto and offering some of the best conditions for miners and traders alike.

Research by crypto experts at CryptoCasinos analysed 10 metrics to determine which countries across the globe have adopted crypto more so than any others, making them the most crypto-friendly nations.

The metrics chosen are the percentage of the population holding cryptocurrency, the cost and profit of mining one bitcoin, and search volume per 100,000 population for crypto-related keywords.

The data also includes the percentage share of each country’s traffic to each of the major crypto exchanges Binance, Coinbase, BitFinex, Kraken, Kucoin and OKX.

Countries with the highest rates of crypto adoption  

Argentina is the most crypto-friendly country. One in ten (9.7%) of the country’s population holds cryptocurrency, over triple the global average of 3%.

The low energy costs make it a perfect place to mine Bitcoin, costing an estimated $14,647 to mine 1 Bitcoin, meaning a profit of $51,261 (based on a BTC price of $65,908). Argentina also has one of the highest amounts of traffic (6.3%) to Binance (the world’s largest crypto exchange).

America has a high percentage of the population holding a cryptocurrency, with 15.6%. However, higher average energy costs mean it costs more to mine Bitcoin in certain parts of the States ($87,885).

Americans visited Coinbase over 48 million times in March, making up 59% of the website traffic. The US also made up 23.3% of the traffic to Kraken, showing the US is actively embracing crypto and investing through these exchanges.

Colombia ranks third for crypto adoption; the rise in blockchain activity is partly due to the depreciation of the Colombian Peso over the past few years (as reported by Bloomberg in 2022); crypto offers wealth protection from depreciating currencies.

Five per cent (5%) of the population holds crypto, and Colombians make up 5.8% of the global web traffic for the largest exchanges, which is on par with many of the other countries in this list.

Ukraine is the fourth most crypto-friendly state. Over 10% of the population holds cryptocurrency, and mining costs are particularly cheap, averaging around $19,530 per bitcoin.

Based on the price previously stated, this would mean the profit would be $46,378.  Ukraine also makes up 4.8% of the web traffic to Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange.

The United Arab Emirates ranks fifth for crypto adoption worldwide, with the largest percentage of the population holding crypto at 30.4% (The average across all countries is 3%), only Vietnam comes close with 21%.

Search volume for crypto-related terms is also the highest with 1,415 searches per 100,000 of the population.

The UAE has been fostering a robust and flexible ecosystem to attract business and drive forward technological innovation, making the nation a frontrunner in digital adoption, as reported by Forbes in 2023.

Vietnam, ranking sixth, has continued to witness its economy becoming more digitised in the last decade, becoming one of the world’s most crypto-adopted nations and is currently Asia’s most crypto-friendly country.

Twenty million (21.2%) of the population hold cryptocurrencies. Vietnam drives 4.9% of the web traffic to crypto exchange OKX and 6.3% to Binance.

Turkey ranks seventh for crypto adoption, which could be since the Turkish lira has, at times, proven to be more volatile than bitcoin. Turkey’s inflation rate surpassed 83% in 2022 and is around 67% currently.

Due to this, over 4.8 million (5.6%) of the population choose to hold crypto.

Turkey makes up 6.6% of the web traffic to Binance, and mining operations may be slightly cheaper, with an average cost of $39,060 per Bitcoin.

Canada is eighth in this ranking for crypto adoption. 7% of the nation currently hold crypto, and there are 1,204 searches for crypto-related keywords every month per 100,000 of the population.

Canada is also responsible for 8.4% of website traffic to Kraken.

Singapore ranks ninth for crypto adoption. Having earned a reputation as one of the key financial centres in the world, it is unsurprising that Singapore has begun to establish itself as a global cryptocurrency hotspot.

[Featured Image by Kanchanara: Credit]

Coinbase (COIN.O), opens new tab will argue at a court hearing on Wednesday that the U.S. securities regulator should drop its case against it because the tokens traded on its crypto exchange are not akin to securities, said a person familiar with the case and court filings.

The hearing is the next major development in a closely watched court battle between Coinbase and the Securities and Exchange Commission that is likely to have implications for digital assets since it could clarify the SEC’s jurisdiction over the sector.

Coinbase’s plan is to lean on a core argument it has made in court filings: that the SEC is overreaching and the assets it lists for trading are not securities.

Coinbase,  the world’s largest publicly traded cryptocurrency exchange, is expected to argue that crypto assets differ from assets such as stocks or bonds that are subject to oversight by the U.S. securities regulator and that the SEC has overstepped its authority. Other crypto firms have expressed similar views.

Earlier in June, the SEC sued Coinbase saying the firm facilitated trading of at least 13 crypto tokens that should have been registered as securities and was operating illegally as a national securities exchange, broker and clearing agency without registering with the regulator.

The SEC also targeted Coinbase’s “staking” program, in which it pools assets to verify activity on blockchain networks and takes commissions, in exchange for “rewards” to customers. It said that program should have been registered with the agency.

The lawsuit is one of a slew the SEC has brought against the crypto sector under the premise that many crypto assets are securities.

The agency focused initially on companies selling digital tokens, but under the leadership of chair Gary Gensler has shifted focus to firms offering trading platforms and clearing activity, and acting as broker-dealers.

But the Crypto companies deny that most tokens meet the definition of a security and say legislation is needed to regulate the industry.

Coinbase in August asked Judge Katherine Polk Failla to dismiss the SEC’s lawsuit, citing a ruling in a separate case in which a judge found Ripple Labs did not violate federal securities law by selling its XRP crypto token on public exchanges – a major victory for the crypto sector.

The SEC argued that its case against Coinbase should proceed, citing a different court’s earlier ruling in the case of crypto developer Terraform Labs that vindicated the regulator’s position.

[Featured Image Credit]

The report, “Latest Evolution of ‘Pig Butchering’ Scam Lures Victim in Fake Mining Scheme,” details the story of one of the scammed victims in the pools, named *Frank, and how he lost $22,000 in one week after “someone” pretending to be “Vivian” on the dating app MeetMe contacted him.

After Sophos X-Ops investigated Frank’s story, the team uncovered a total of 14 domains associated with the scam operation, as well as dozens of nearly identical fraud sites that, together, netted this one “ring” of pig butcherers more than $1 million in three months.

This scam takes advantage of the largely unregulated world of decentralized finance (DeFI) cryptocurrency trading applications. Such applications create “liquidity pools” of various types of cryptocurrencies that users can then access to make trades from one cryptocurrency to another. Those who participate in the pool receive a percentage of any fee paid when a trade is made, creating an enticing return on investment.

To join a pool, participants first have to sign an online smart contract—a contract that gives another account (typically the operators of the pool) permission to access participants’ wallets to facilitate trades.

Fake pools, which pig butcherers are increasingly utilizing to siphon funds from targets, operate in much the same way. However, unlike legitimate pools, at some point these scammers “pull the rug” and empty the entire liquidity pool for themselves.

“When we first discovered these fake liquidity pools, it was rather primitive and still developing. Now, we’re seeing sha zhu pan scammers taking this particular brand of cryptocurrency fraud and seamlessly integrating it into their existing set of tactics, such as luring targets over dating apps. Very few understand how legitimate cryptocurrency trading works, so it’s easy for these scammers to con their targets. There are even toolkits now for this sort of scam, making it simple for different pig butchering operations to add this type of crypto fraud to their arsenal. While last year, Sophos tracked dozens of these fraudulent ‘liquidity pool’ sites, now we’re seeing more than 500,” said Sean Gallagher, principal threat researcher, Sophos.

Sophos X-Ops first learned of this liquidity mining operation from a victim named Frank. Frank had connected on the dating app MeetMe with a scammer hiding behind the persona of Vivian, a German woman supposedly living in Washington, D.C. for work. For weeks, Frank chatted with Vivian, who mixed her romantic promises with persistent attempts to convince Frank to invest in crypto.

Eventually, Frank opened a Trust Wallet account (a legitimate app for converting dollars to cryptocurrency) and connected to the link to the liquidity pool site Vivian recommended.

In reality, the pool site was a fraud site utilizing the brand of Allnodes, an established decentralized finance platform provider, as a cover. Between May 31 and June 5, Frank invested $22,000 in the scheme. Just three days later, the scammers emptied Frank’s digital wallet.

Frank, looking to recover his money, turned to Vivan, who claimed he needed to invest even more in the pool to recover his funds and reap the “rewards.” While waiting for his bank to authorize a money transfer to Coinbase, Frank started researching what was going on and came across an article on liquidity mining from Sophos. At this point, Frank reached out to Gallagher for help.

Even after Gallagher instructed Frank to block Vivian, she eventually found him on Telegram and continued her attempts to entice him into “continuing their investment,” going so far as to send a lengthy, emotional letter that was very likely created by a generative AI app.

“What makes these sorts of scams particularly tricky is that they don’t require any malware to be installed on a victim’s device. They don’t even involve a fake app, like some of those we’ve encountered in other CryptoRom scams. This entire fake liquidity pool was run through the legitimate Trust Wallet app. At one point, Frank even tried to contact Trust Wallet’s support to recover his money, but he connected with a fake support contact from the fraudulent liquidity pool site. There is no regulation of these pools, legitimate or otherwise, on these crypto apps. These scams succeed solely through social engineering, and the scammers are persistent. Vivian continued trying to contact Frank for weeks after he blocked her on WhatsApp.

“The only way to stay safe from these scams is to be vigilant and know that they exist and how they operate. That is why Frank wanted to share his story. Users need be wary of anyone they have no connection with reaching out to them suddenly via any dating app or social media platform, particularly if the ‘person’ reaching out wants to move the conversation to a platform like WhatsApp and then discusses investing in cryptocurrency,” said Gallagher.

Sophos has shared its data on this case with Chainalysis and Coinbase, as well as other threat intelligence professionals in the cryptocurrency space, all of whom continue to investigate. People who believe they may be a victim of pig butchering or liquidity mining fraud are free to reach out to Sophos. They should also reach out to their local law enforcement for assistance.

*[Name has been changed to protect the privacy of the victim].

As a result, crypto app downloads have surged by over 15%, suggesting that investors are increasingly turning to digital assets as a safe haven from the instability of traditional banking.

In response to the surge, a number of leading crypto apps have seen a considerable rise in downloads, indicating the growing importance of digital assets for investors.

The top 10 apps are Coinbase, one of the most popular apps for buying, selling and managing cryptocurrency. In 2021, the company reached a $100 billion market valuation, making it the most valuable crypto company in the world.

Crypto.com has also seen significant growth in downloads, with its app increasing by more than 8%. Crypto.com is a popular option for both retail and institutional investors and its app is used to buy, sell, store and transfer cryptocurrency. The company’s MCO Visa card makes it easier to spend cryptocurrencies in everyday life.

Trust has also seen a huge surge in downloads. The platform is a secure cryptocurrency wallet that can be used to store, send and receive cryptocurrencies. The app is easy to use and also offers access to a variety of crypto services and features, making it a great option for investors.

Binance is another popular crypto app that has seen a big jump in downloads following SVB’s collapse. The app is used to buy, sell and manage cryptocurrency. It also allows users to trade a variety of digital assets, making it an ideal choice for investors looking for diversification.

Bitcoin and Crypto DeFi Wallet is among the 10 top crypto apps that have seen a big jump in downloads. The app is designed to make it easy to manage and access decentralized finance (DeFi) assets. Users can also access crypto-based lending, staking and trading services, making it an ideal option for those looking to explore the world of digital assets.

Blockchain.com is one of the oldest crypto wallet and exchange apps. The app is used to buy, sell and manage cryptocurrency and it also offers access to a variety of crypto services and features. It is a great choice for those looking to get started in the crypto space.

Popular app KuKoin is used to buy and sell a variety of digital assets, as well as to access a range of crypto services and features.

Kraken is one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges and its app has seen a big jump in downloads. The app allows users to access a wide range of crypto services and features, as well as to buy, sell and manage digital assets.

eToro and BitPay are two of the leading crypto payment app providers. Both apps have seen a big jump in downloads, with over 10% combined increase. They make it easy to buy, sell and manage cryptocurrency, as well as to make payments in crypto.

Further report shows that the global market cap for all cryptocurrencies increased 8.3% during the same time period to about $1.1 trillion, slightly down from a weekly high of $1.14 trillion on Tuesday.

The surge in downloads of these top cryptocurrency apps following SVB’s collapse shows that investors are looking to protect their investments and are turning to the safety of cryptocurrency apps. With a wide range of crypto services and features available, these apps are becoming increasingly popular with investors looking to explore the world of digital assets.

Investors are increasingly looking for alternative investments, and cryptocurrency seems to be an attractive option for many. The traditional banking system is becoming increasingly unstable, and many are looking for secure, trustworthy alternatives. Hence, the potential for high returns has attracted more people to the cryptocurrency market.

Overall, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has had a huge impact on the cryptocurrency market. With the increased number of crypto app downloads and the increased trust in the industry, the cryptocurrency market will likely continue to grow and expand in the coming months and years. Despite the current instability, cryptocurrencies are still seen as a secure, viable option for those looking for alternative investments.

Aya provides a platform where the African workforce can work with organisations that know the worth of their skills and talents. It has achieved tremendous success by not only connecting talent and organisations, but by bridging the trust between them.

“We want to unleash the resilience and resourcefulness of Africans to the world. And we are leveraging innovative technology to build tools that will enable African talent to be connected to the global marketplace,” says Eric Annan, founder, and CEO of Aya. 

Aya assesses the needs of an organisation very carefully by understanding its vision and desired outcomes and discussing these with the founders and executive team. Pishikeni Tukura, the co-founder of Aya, says this has been instrumental to the company’s strong growth trajectory.

“We are looking to redefine how talent is matched to startups,” he says. “This is why we go into a startup and talk to the founders, get to know them and their vision, and assess their needs.” We know what they need as we are founders ourselves. With our A.I. tools, we are able to discover the right people for these organizations that we believe will propel them further into their vision and success. “

The workforce can truly live borderless by opening up the blockchain and crypto to Africans.

“Aya provides an opportunity to do jobs you actually enjoy while increasing your capacity to earn beyond your physical borders,” says Annan. “It also gives businesses the opportunity to access the finest talents available, vetted and trusted to get the job done. In this way, we take the pressure off founders and executives. “

While, to this date, the company has linked talent to organisations spanning three different continents, it now wants to go beyond just finding talent but nurturing it. 

“There’s no shortage of talent in the world, but there is a shortage of talent with the right mindset to suit the company they are working for.” Especially when it comes to startups, which is where we are focusing. We want to do much more than just create a hiring platform like Upwork or a cryptocurrency wallet,” says Annan. “This kind of arrangement needs training, education, and mentoring.”

To fund this new training, Aya sent a proposal to Coinbase Giving. The feedback from Coinbase Giving was overwhelmingly positive, says Annan.

“They felt it was an inspiring and futuristic approach to talent,” he says. “With the funds, we are looking to pilot a training program with 50 people, and then build an education tool into the Aya system and also convert our existing talent,”

Tukura says that whether people have ten years of experience or just one year of experience, Aya wants to be able to give them what they need to join a startup strategically and execute the vision.

“This is not just a tool to get people hired, it’s a tool that grows companies—and opens up more opportunities. If we can be at the forefront of a new economic movement, we will be happy,” he says.

Interested applicants can register to participate in the program by filling out their details in the attached form. Successful applicants will undergo a rigorous vetting process as we aim to work with top early-stage African talent who are passionate. The program is set to begin at the end of September, 2022.

Ayagigs can be accessed at https://beta.ayagigs.com and you can sign up either as a business to get access to vetted African talent or as a freelancer to access global opportunities. Join the Aya community to get the latest updates on our progress.