Inflation hedge Series I savings bonds paying 9.62% unleashed a flood of buyers to the Treasury Department website on Wednesday, crashing the website ahead of a Friday deadline to receive the guaranteed 9.62% interest rate.
What Happened: "Due to exceptionally high traffic, the TreasuryDirect website has experienced intermittent slowdowns today," a Treasury Department spokesman said Wednesday. "We are in the process of adding to the system's service capacity and taking other steps in the hopes of resolving the issues quickly."
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Customers have been informed by the Treasury Department that they have until Friday at 11:59:59 p.m. Eastern time to complete their transaction and lock in the rate.
The Treasury issued $1.95 billion in I Bonds in just the final week of October, exceeding the figure for the entire fiscal year 2021, as the interest rate on I Bonds is anticipated to decrease to approximately 6.47% on Nov. 1.
More than 3.7 million new accounts were made in a single year, surpassing the 2.4 million accounts made in the previous 10 years put together, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
