Leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has urged users to “invest responsibly” in digital currencies such as bitcoin.

The cautionary blog post from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong comes at a time when bitcoin is witnessing explosive growth – hitting $19697 levels on its platform last week.

“We at Coinbase couldn’t be more excited by the explosion of interest in digital currencies. The last few weeks has seen an unprecedented increase in the price of digital currencies. More people are engaging with our platform than ever and that bodes well for the future of the digital currency. At the same time, it does create extreme volatility and stress on our systems,” Armstrong said.

However, as bitcoin price hit the fresh all-time high on December 7th, the platform went offline citing “record high traffic”.

Armstrong said that while the company is investing heavily to scale its platform meet the growing demand, its services may become unavailable during times of significant volatility or volume.

“This could result in the inability to buy or sell for periods of time. Despite ongoing increases in our support capacity, our customer support response times may be delayed, especially for requests that do not involve immediate risks to customer account security,” he added.

Armstrong further pointed out the risks associated with trading digital currency and urged users to familiarize themselves with buy and sell limits. He said:

“We also wanted to remind customers of some of the risks associated with trading digital currency. Digital currencies are volatile and the prices can go up and down. Due to the rapidly changing price of digital currencies, some customers may not have sell limits that are sufficient relative to the value of total digital currency they are storing on Coinbase. Sell limits are one of the many measures Coinbase takes to protect client accounts and assets.”