Has the "lifeline" of the global financial market been frozen? ❄️

Something surreal happened last Friday: the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) was down for over 10 hours. It wasn’t a hacker attack, nor a system bug—it was because someone forgot to put antifreeze in the data center’s water pipes.

Here’s what happened: CME’s data center is outsourced to CyrusOne and is located in Aurora, Illinois. One day, a staff member didn’t follow the standard procedure during drainage, causing the cooling system’s water pipes to freeze solid 🧊. What’s even crazier is that when the system detected abnormal temperatures and triggered the emergency response, it ended up blowing out several coolers ⚙️.

BlockBeats reported on this incident on December 7. CyrusOne only admitted it was an operational error this Saturday, and CME publicly apologized, saying “we’ve caused trouble for global clients.” But here’s the issue: this data center used to be CME’s own asset. In 2016, it was sold to CyrusOne and then leased back for 15 years—basically outsourcing its lifeline 🌐.

A single point of failure can bring the entire market to a halt. This kind of thing is even more concerning in the crypto space. If even traditional financial institutions can be affected, how should we evaluate the risks of centralized exchanges? Has anyone ever experienced asset freezes or liquidation due to technical issues on a trading platform? 🔥

At the end of the day, decentralization isn’t just a slogan—it can be a lifesaver in critical moments. Do you think the current CEX infrastructure is reliable?