CoinMarketCap and other crypto data aggregators suffered a temporary glitch that briefly quoted the prices of multiple cryptocurrencies at absurdly high prices. The glitch showed the price of Bitcoin (BTC/USD) at $872.00 billion (£657.71 billion). The price indices for Ethereum (ETH/USD), the second-largest crypto, showed the coin trading at $81.00 billion (£61.11 billion).
Surprisingly, the glitch showed ETH as the leading crypto by capitalization, and BTC was the second-largest crypto. Notably, even the price of Tether (USDT/USD), which is pegged to the US dollar, surged to $20,520,763.43 (£15,479,837.89). However, this glitch did not affect the trading prices of cryptos on exchanges.
Apart from Binance-owned CoinMarketCap, other data aggregators that suffered the glitch included Coinbase and Cointelegraph. All the affected platforms apologized for the error and fixed it soon afterwards.
Following the irregularities we observed on our platform this afternoon, despite the issue having been fixed, we will be rebooting our servers as a final step in accordance with our internal remediation plan. Apologies for the inconvenience.
— CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) December 15, 2021
The platform added that it was investigating the root cause of the problem, quipping that the prices it had displayed were not from 2026.
A case of using the same data source
Explaining what caused the glitch on multiple data aggregators, Rosario Ingargiola, the founder of crypto clearing and settlement platform Bosonic, said,
Everyone tunes into those disruptions, so to the extent they all use the same data source, and so when there’s a problem and prices are really off, that can create herd behavior to drive investment decisions.
The news of the inflated prices attracted a lot of attention, with some adopters trying to withdraw the funds before discovering the trading prices were unaffected. While it all turned out to be a hoax, it is worth noting that the crypto market is staging a comeback today after starting the week on a bearish note.
At the time of writing, most of the coins in the top-10 list are green, with Solana (SOL/USD) being the largest gainer after rising 6.34% over the past 24 hours to change hands at $165.36 (£124.77). On the other hand, DOGE is the biggest loser after plunging 16.44% to trade at $0.1793 (£0.14).
BTC and ETH have decent gains after surging 1.75% and 1.23% in the day to change hands at $48,222.61 (£36,387.09) and $3,868.92 (£2,911.81), respectively.
The post CoinMarketCap glitch temporarily inflates BTC’s price to $870B appeared first on Invezz.
from Ethereum – Invezz
