Bitfinex and Ethfinex Will Be Out Of Service For 7 Hours on January 7

Cryptocurrency trading platforms Bitfinex and Ethfinex will both be down for up to 7 hours, starting from 10:00 AM UTC, January 7, 2019, due to an important data migration that the platform will be going through.

Bitfinex is transferring data from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to private, self-hosted servers to improve its security, efficiency and speed. As a result, both the trading platforms will be unusable for the duration of the switch and users will not be able to access their wallets. Additionally, all features available to users will be offline during the upgrade.

Bitfinex will be switching from AWS cloud to a self-designed infrastructure hosted in a Swiss data centre in the heart of Crypto Valley in a move designed to significantly enhance platform performance, speed and security. As stated before, users will not be able to access their wallets containing their cryptocurrency or have the ability to conduct trading, funding or see any reports on the platforms. The mobile apps will similarly be out of service for the duration.

Additional orders will not be accepted and all outstanding orders will be put on hold, irrespective of price changes and will resume once the services are up and running again. Any deposits that were pending before, and deposits that arrive during the scheduled maintenance, will be processed soon after the platform comes out of maintenance.

The migration is slated to happen on January 7, 2019, and we recommend keeping tabs on the platform’s Twitter handle for regular updates on the day of the switch. Bitfinex has urged its users to consider checking their wallets and “assess the risk of market movement on their open margin positions” before the site goes offline for the upgrade.

Benefits to this switch to private servers include a boost in speed and efficiency, access to cross-connectivity, and co-location services for traders (the FIX feed or ISP link to Bitfinex’s digital asset gateway is for professional traders and institutional firms), and obviously, improved security from attacks and hacks.

Among the very first cryptocurrency trading platforms to launch in the industry in 2012, Bitfinex currently supports 22 cryptocurrencies and has a 24-hours trading volume of over 206 million US Dollars.