UPDATE (4th September 18:45 BST): Bitcoin wallet service Blockchain is accessible once again.

Blockchain, the operator of the world’s most popular bitcoin wallet service, is currently offline.

CoinDesk was last able to retrieve data from the site’s API at 05:44 UTC this morning, with a Reddit user noting the issue at around 07:00.

At press time, a message on the site’s homepage read: “We will be back shortly. Blockchain.info is currently down for maintenance. For status updates please see Twitter. Apologies for any inconvenience.”

A tweet by the company’s Twitter account stated similar information:

We are currently undergoing some maintenance but will be back online shortly. Be sure to follow @blockchain on Twitter for the latest news.

— Blockchain (@blockchain) September 4, 2015

Blockchain co-founder Nic Cary told CoinDesk the downtime was down to the company “installing some new equipment”, adding that it has been “growing fast” lately.

The company’s outage follows a six-hour period of downtime experienced by global bitcoin marketplace LocalBitcoins earlier this week.

LocalBitcoins’ community manager ‘Max’ said in a post on Reddit the problem was related to server issues: “It seems a server got hung up … We’re about to move to new equipment as the current servers are quite old, sad that they had to crash before we moved.”

Time out image via Shutterstock