Coinbase, one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges in the United States, is grappling with a system-wide outage that has rendered its services inaccessible to users on desktop and mobile platforms.

The exchange officially announced the outage on its status page, alerting users to a 'major outage' that began at 4:15 a.m. UTC on May 14.

As a result, attempting to visit the Coinbase website currently displays a 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable' error message. 'Coinbase is experiencing a system-wide outage. We are investigating this issue. Your funds are safe,' the message on its status page reads.

According to a developer guide from Mozilla, this error message commonly indicates that the servers are either undergoing maintenance or experiencing overload.

Coinbase Support has taken to social media to acknowledge the issue and assure users that they are actively investigating and working towards a solution. They have reiterated that users' funds remain safe despite the disruption.

However, it's worth noting that this is not the first time Coinbase has faced temporary outages. On February 28, along with several other exchanges, Coinbase experienced service disruptions due to a surge in crypto trading activity. Such outages can be frustrating for users and may impact Coinbase's reputation and user trust.

While such outages are undoubtedly frustrating for users, some individuals in the cryptocurrency community view these incidents optimistically.

They suggest that the heightened activity causing downtime could potentially benefit the market price, fueling a bullish narrative. Although Coinbase has not specified the outage duration and the underlying cause, the company is expected to provide updates as it works to resolve the issue and restore full functionality to its platform.

Meanwhile, Coinbase is embroiled in legal troubles with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Last month, Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York ruled that the SEC's lawsuit against Coinbase can proceed.

The lawsuit alleges that Coinbase operates as an unregistered securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency. In her ruling, Judge Failla declared that the SEC's lawsuit against Coinbase held 'plausible' ground.

'The Court finds the SEC has sufficiently pleaded that Coinbase operates as an exchange, as a broker, and as a clearing agency under the federal securities laws, and through its Staking Program engages in the unregistered offer and sale of securities,' the court document read. Coinbase's chief legal officer, Paul Grewal, criticized the SEC for deviating from its own Wells notice process, according to his X post on Tuesday.

'We received no 'thorough explanation' of the evidence of what assets supposedly gave rise to securities transactions. We weren't told what assets were at issue,' Grewal added.

Mounting arguments cite the SEC's alleged abuse of power in its enforcement actions against crypto companies. When trading app Robinhood received the SEC's Wells notice earlier this month for alleged securities violations, Rodrigo Silva-Herzog, special counsel at Cooley LLP, had commented on X that the SEC is on its 'carpet bombing campaign' against crypto.

Hayden Adams, founder of Uniswap, another entity that received the SEC warning recently, criticized the agency for allegedly attacking 'good actors' instead of establishing more precise rules for the crypto industry.