It's interesting to see that Coinbase has been down for a good hour now. It's been up and down a bit earlier in the day, too. Their API is very slow as well, which is painful for all the businesses who use them to accept bitcoin. I guess Coinbase has some operational issues to work through.

I was intrigued that Coinbase did not have a voice during the senate hearings, but Jeremy Allaire from Circle.com (a relative newcomer to the bitcoin space) did. His remarks were pretty good. In fact I thought almost everyone who spoke was reasonable. Now if only more than one Senator had shown up... Makes me think that Washington hasn't quite understood yet just how big a deal bitcoin is going to be.