Voyager Reports Multiple 'Service Disruptions' After Encouraging Users to Trade Dogecoin

Crypto trading platform Voyager has gone off-line several times since Thursday due to "immense ongoing volume," after its official Twitter account sent out multiple tweets encouraging users to buy and trade dogecoin (DOGE) on its app.

"We're still working to stabilize our scalability, and performing system upgrades," according to a tweet from Voyager. "We just wanted to keep you updated as we work to get the system back online. We apologize for the inconvenience."

At press time, Voyager's support team sent out at least four emails to its users addressing the service disruptions since the platform's first tweet on Thursday about dogecoin. In that first tweet the trading platform asked users to tell their friends about Voyager with a link to guidance of how to buy and trade the skyrocketing cryptocurrency.

Angry users appear to have taken their dissatisfaction to Twitter, too. As one user wrote: "Voyager is the reason I missed out on [DOGE] at 25% this morning. I was digging it until my deposit was continually denied. The thousands I've missed out on brings much shame."

A spokesperson representing Voyager told CoinDesk that Voyager's platform experienced "an unprecedented amount of volume and traffic" after retail traders from Reddit and Robinhood began migrating into cryptocurrencies. The "rapid" growth in trading activity on Voyager generated 150% more accounts in just 24 hours, the spokesperson added.

"While we had internally scaled our system ten times to handle the influx, what we saw after was of an order of magnitude higher, and ultimately required our system to go offline for further scaling," according to the email response from Voyager's spokesperson. The platform recognized significant spikes of trading volumes in dogecoin, its own voyager token, as well as bitcoin.

In a Thursday email from Voyager's support team reviewed by CoinDesk, Voyager claimed the service disruption was due to "an unexpected event from a system upgrade." Another email sent on Friday noted "immense ongoing volume" from both "new accounts and trading."

"All funds are safe," according to Friday's email. "While we experience these volume increases, the Voyager app may periodically undergo maintenance periods to ensure systems are able to operate efficiently during this surge in demand."

UPDATE (Jan. 30, 2021, 02:11 UTC): the article was updated with responses from a spokesperson representing Voyager.