Key Takeaways:
- On Tuesday, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency websites went haywire.
- CoinMarketCap website bug resulted in eye-popping figures for prices, market capitalizations, and more.
- The bug was active for about an hour and has been resolved now.
On Tuesday, shortly before 5 p.m. ET, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency websites went haywire, with wildly inaccurate prices and several relatively unknown coins listed in the top 10. CoinMarketCap, a cryptocurrency data aggregator, made headlines on Tuesday evening when a website bug resulted in eye-popping figures for prices, market capitalizations, and more. The bug was active for about an hour and has been resolved now.
CoinMarketCap began displaying massive numbers for assets such as Bitcoin BTC, which was valued at $778,145,456,545.11, and Ethereum ETH, which was valued at $9,182,186,126.81 each. Meanwhile, the site listed Cocos-BCX (CRYPT: COCOS) as the market’s top cryptocurrency. Other incorrectly listed coins in the top ten were Sora (CRYPTO: XOR) and Hex HEX.
In a tweet, the site’s operators acknowledged the pricing issues, saying that “The Engineering team is aware of incorrect price information appearing on [CoinMarketCap]. We are currently investigating and will update this status when we have more information.”
According to the website, Bitcoin’s market cap appears to be $14.7 quintillion. It also places Cocos-BCX first on the list, despite its small market capitalization (even under normal circumstances). The follow-up tweet from CoinMarketCap stated, “How did it feel to be a trillionaire for a couple of hours?”.
CoinMarketCap has also been used as a source of price data by some decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. DeFi protocol DeFiChain tweeted that “Due to an error with the @CoinMarketCap API, all DeFiChain Vaults have automatically been halted, for now, ensuring the safety of your loans.”
This tweet suggests that loans may have been liquidated based on incorrect price data. The bug most likely also affected trading bots that used the CoinMarketCap API and would have responded to the apparent higher prices.
Adam Cochran, partner at Cinneamhain Ventures tweeted,
